


Be

by 50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Development, Character Study, Depressed Hank Anderson, Detectives, Detroit Police Department (Detroit: Become Human), Developing Friendships, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Deviants (Detroit: Become Human), Divorced Hank Anderson, F/M, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Hank Anderson Swears, Hank Anderson and Connor Live Together, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Parent Hank Anderson, Past Character Death, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Protective Hank Anderson, Supportive Hank Anderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-10-06 20:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 93
Words: 45,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret/pseuds/50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret
Summary: Hank, trying to duct tape his life together, after one of the better endings [Connor and Markus survived, as did Luther and Alice, but Kara has died, though that won't be very important to the story, sorry Kara :( ]





	1. Beings

"The evacuation order-"

"I'm not leavin' my house, Connor." 

Connor had the good sense to shut up, for once in his life. I turned on the TV and flipped between channels. "Look, you're on TV." I said, sort of joking, or something, I guess. 

"Yes. That would make sense." said Connor.

"Asshole." Connor didn't respond to that. He was still standing near the doorway, pacing in little circles like Sumo did when he wanted me to open the door so he could take a piss. 

"Just get over here and watch some fucking TV. Stop pacing around like that." I felt a little bad as soon as I said it. If I were Connor I'd probably come back with some stupid retort, but he sat down.  

"Why the fuck are you here anyway?" 

"I'm not the one who's supposed to have evacuated." Connor said. I think he actually sort of smiled at that. At least a little. Wild. 

"Yeah yeah." I rolled my eyes. "Whatever." It's not like everyone had left, anyways. Technically, a few police officers had to stay. I wasn't technically one of the ones they picked, given that I had punched out an FBI officer, but screw it, it was close enough to a good excuse. That still didn't explain why Connor was in my gross house, and not hanging out with his Android buddies, but I decided not to push the question. He wasn't bothering me too much anyway. It was actually sort of nice to have someone other than Sumo to talk to. Sort of. It was also sort of stressful. I tugged awkwardly at my coat because it gave me something to do. I guessed this meant I'd be wearing pants around the house now. Regularly. That's probably sort of a stupid thing to be bummed out about but that's Hank Anderson for ya. I fell asleep on the couch wishing I had the energy to at least change into sweats. Jeans had to be the least comfortable clothes to sleep in ever.


	2. Human

When I woke up  _someone_ had put a blanket over me and Connor had left. No note or anything. He was just gone. He was probably fine but...I called him anyway. 

"Hello, Hank" Hank huh? That was new. 

"Hey Connor. Where'd you go? You still in one piece?" 

"Of course." Said Connor, as if I was somehow the asshole here for worrying "I didn't want to intrude so I let myself out when you fell asleep." 

"Didn't want to intrude, huh?" I snorted. Sure. Asshole. 

"Exactly." Said Connor, either missing the sarcasm or not caring. 

"Alright, well...take care." I said. "It's pretty crazy out there right now." 

"Of course." Connor promised, but it was impossible to tell if he meant it. 

"You got somewhere safe to stay?" I asked, double checking for some stupid reason. 

"I have no need to 'stay' anywhere, Hank." Connor said. "I do not need to sleep and I won't enter rest for another two weeks at least." 

"Bullshit. Look, if you decide to get your head out of your ass, my couch is open." I said.

"...Thank you." He said. But I could tell he wouldn't be coming back tonight anyways. I flipped through a few channels on the TV, settled on something, and then fell back asleep almost immediately. 

 


	3. Men

After about a week he finally caved and moved the hell in already. I didn't admit that was a relief. It was getting too cold out there, even for an android or whatever. 

"Took you long enough." I said. 

"Sorry, Lieutenant." 

"What happened to calling me Hank?" 

"I just...wasn't sure if it was too familiar. I didn't want to cross any boundaries."

" _You_ didn't want to cross any boundaries?" I snorted. "Sure."

"So then..." He trailed off.

"My name is Hank." I said. 

"Okay, Hank." He said, like he was fucking memorizing it or something. It sounded weird and...mechanical? Was that racist or something? Screw it I couldn't keep up. He sounded mechanical and that was the damn truth. 

 

 

 


	4. DPD

After six months sitting on my ass doing nothing, the DPD finally hired me back. I decided I'd sleep in on my first day back and maybe show up if I felt like it. Getting out of bed was basically impossible these days anyways. Why bother? Connor was not on board with that. He woke me up at six in the fucking morning, knocking on my door and yelling at me that if I didn't get up I'd be late. 

"What're you jealous?" I asked.

"Yes." He said. Just like Connor to be jealous of something like that. It shut me up anyway. 

* * *

 "Listen, Jeffrey...I've been talking with Connor, and...he'd like to come back on as a detective. I think he'd be alright at it."

"Hank..." Jeff sighed at me. 

"No. Hear me out I-"

"I don't have final say on this, Hank. You really think the DPD is gonna just  _let_ me hire Connor, after that stunt he pulled in November?" 

"Why do I even fuckin' bother talking to you?" I asked. 

Jeffrey sighed, like  _I_ was somehow being the pain in  _his_ ass. I knew I _was_ being a pain in his ass but it was still annoying. "Give it a few months. Just while everything calms down."

"Calms down my ass" I muttered, but I didn't quite say it loud enough for him to respond to and I left, because I had already wasted enough energy trying to help Connor get this godawful job. 

* * *

 My desk was still a mess, which was reassuring, because it meant it was left alone while I was gone, more or less, and frustrating, because it meant I was still a mess with a gross desk and there was mold growing in the old donuts box. Because this wasn't just a great enough way to start up work again, I was supposed to go to court on Friday ( _Friday_ ) to help decide if Perkins was guilty of war crimes. Obviously he was, but he wasn't actually going to do any time for it no matter what I said and I fucking knew that. He'd been perfectly law abiding at the time and that was most likely all that would matter. Guys like Perkins never fucking got what was coming to them. They just smirked and complained and never even felt guilty or lost a nights sleep. I decided right then that I wasn't going to court on Friday and I sent an email letting those whom it concerned know where they could shove their little pretend-justice parade. I left early and got home late and Connor got angry because apparently he was a fucking breathalyzer on top of everything else. Of course he was. Why the hell not? Just my goddamn luck. I got an earful and sort of zoned out thinking about what a sack of shit I was, and how I already knew I was a sack of shit and didn't need Connor to tell me that, but when I tried to explain that, surprise surprise, it didn't shut him up it just got him more pissed off and bitchy. 

* * *

 The next day at work (Tuesday, if you're keeping track) was also shitty. Someone, probably some underpaid Cyberlife fucker, had destroyed a bunch of unactivated RK800 units and dumped them in the river and nobody could even figure out if it was a crime, or just a sort of disgusting anecdote, but there we all were anyway, freezing our asses off and looking at not-Connor's face and guts all over the mud. If it was a crime, no one could agree what crime it would be anyway. Murder? Gavin laughed out loud at this and told us a 'hilarious' story about murdering his toaster. Theft? From who? it was most likely Cyberlife that did it and they hadn't reported...well they hadn't made a report anyways. It got us nowhere, ended up being officially categorized as "nothing" and made me want to puke my guts out. Because it wasn't a shitty enough day, Connor somehow got ahold of crimescene pictures and I sat there giving him the world most awkward fucking hug in history.

* * *

 On Wednesday I came home to a note telling me that Connor was out with friends (hallelujah, the kid had actually made friends) and that he'd be back by at least three a.m. I called him to double check and it turned out that he had not, in fact, been kidnapped, and was actually out planning negotiations with his revolutionary buddies. 

* * *

On Thursday, I came home to see four celebrities (or, five, technically, fuck, there was a weird thought)  camped out in my house, sitting on my chairs, my table, and my kitchen counter. Also, there was...hey...I was pretty sure I recognized those girls. 

I nodded awkwardly. "Hey." 

"Hello." Said the one with the blue hair. 

"Uh...glad you're doing okay." 

"Yeah." She smiled. Good. "A lot of things have been changing for the better."

I made a vague noise of agreement. "I'm gonna go pass out. See you tomorrow, Connor. Good luck or whatever."

"Wait!" Called out the...Traci with short hair. 

"Don't bother." Said the girl Markus seemed to be dating. "He's already given his answer."

I was gonna regret staying up to hear whatever this was and I knew it. 

* * *

 

Yup. This was a mistake. I didn't want to be here. I hated court and this whole trial was just a way for Warren to dump the blame on someone else, only to most likely wipe his hands clean too. But fuck it. When the messiah, even somebody else's messiah told you to do something, I guess that didn't leave me less of a choice. I could either do it, or be the guy who told robo-Jesus to shove it. Great. Just fucking great. 

 


	5. Hank Anderson

I had a fucking nightmare. A weird one. Cole was there, but it wasn't the usual medical bullshit or car crash. We were at the station. I wasn't exactly in the dream. Well I was but it wasn't from my perspective. I was back in Fowlers office bitching at him and Cole was wandering around the office with Connor, asking him dumb questions. I don't remember what. Just that Connor was nice to Cole and they got along. It was shaping up to be an okay dream until they got to the cells and Cole went over to one and said who's that?

And Connor said the guy didn't have a name. 

And I wasn't in Fowlers office anymore I was standing behind the guy, cuffing him, even though he was already in a cell, so why bother? My dreams were always so fucking stupid. So Anyway, I guess Ben's story about this must have fucking bothered me more than I thought, and in the dream I was right there and I just started ramming the android's head against the glass.

Cole kept yelling at me to stop and I told him to shut up. Even though I was on the wrong side of the glass to do it, the dream didn't care, and I reached over and smacked Cole. It felt so real. I got sick just thinking about it afterward. In the dream though, I didn't give a fuck. I mean  _I did_. I felt guilty. But dream-me...the way I acted I was just fucking remorseless.  I kept bashing the guys head in even after he was dead until his face was just gone and it was just this muddy blue mess with little shards of plastic sticking out and Cole looked up at me and said "I hate you."

I woke up sweating like crazy and feeling like shit. It was three in the morning but I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep so I went and made myself some coffee and flipped through channels on the TV because I was too fucking cheap to pay for a streaming service anyway. 

It sort of popped into my mind then, that I was even shittier than I'd realized I was. I should've gotten my shit together without so much bullshit.

When I got to work, I tried to scrape the "We don't bleed the same color" sticker off of my desk with my nails. It wouldn't come off. I managed to get it to sort of rip though, so that most of it was just that gross white fuzzy stuff you get when a sticker won't rip off all the way. Close enough, I guessed. Not like it really fixed anything though. Hallmark probably didn't have a card for "I'm sorry I threatened to shoot you." Either. Fuck my life. I knew I was a waste of air, I guess I'd just never realized I was an _evil_ piece of shit too.  

I went out and got drunk and that numbed it a little. 

My phone kept buzzing. Connor. Asking if I was alright. 

What a fucking idiot he was. 

 

 


	6. Hank Anderson Pt. 2

I don't really remember getting back home but I woke up in my own bed so I must have. I didn't leave my room that day. I had a headache and a half and the sun hurt my eyes just coming through the blinds. I slept it off all day. That's what Sundays were for anyway, right? 

Monday was actually worse, if you can believe it. A woman pulled a gun on me in the interrogation room while I was supposed to be taking her statement and then Reed fucking shot her and I had to go home early just to clean off the blood. What happened was...well she said she needed to talk to me specifically. I probably should have known something was up right then but I went along with it anyways, even though I didn't really trust her. And then she goes. 

"I'd like to report a murder." 

She was staring at me really weird at this point and in hindsight, I don't know how I didn't see it coming. 

She goes "You murdered my daughter, Lieutenant Anderson." 

And I go "What?"

And she says "It was during the sweeps of the city. A woman told me about a place she might be safe. I knew a human adult would never be allowed there, but I took her as far as I could. She didn't want to go. She cried. I promised her I'd see her as soon as everything was over. I told her to be brave and everything would be okay. I thought Jericho would be safe for her. Tell me that your little investigation had nothing to do with that."

I just sort of sat there for a second feeling sick. The woman wouldn't shut up though. She said. "My daughter's name was Olivia. She was two months old. She acted six years old. She's dead. Tell me that wasn't on you."

And I could've. I could've pointed out that I didn't even go to the ship and I didn't call in the strike but I punched Perkins and as great as that felt I knew exactly what the fuck I was doing. 

And I was about to say that but the woman pulled a gun out of her bag. She was shaking so bad, even at this range she'd probably miss, or at least she might. I sort of hoped she wouldn't. 

I killed a child. I killed a child. I killed a child. I killed a child. I killed a--

A gun went off and for a second I thought she  _had_ missed. She hadn't shot though. 

She was with her daughter, wherever the fuck that was. I envied her and I felt like shit for that. 

 


	7. Lieutenant

"I told you. It's Hank."

"Sorry Hank." Connor looked like he was, for once in his life, actually sort of sorry.

"Nah it doesn't really matter anyway." I said. "Just...try okay?"

"Sure, Lieu-Hank." He caught himself at the last second. 

I snorted at him. "Thanks, kid." 

"I was going to ask you-"

"A personal question?" I guessed, only half-joking. 

"Not exactly. I just wanted to make sure you were alright." Shit. I definitely wasn't but Connor didn't need to be worrying about that. I missed having a therapist, times like this. 

"I'm fine, Con." I said. 

He looked skeptical. He was too smart for his own good, that kid. 

"I said I'm fine." I repeated.

He still didn't really seem to believe me but he stopped staring anyway. Good. I was a grown-ass murderer, I didn't need the kid worrying about me on top of whatever else he was thinking about. Murderers don't need cuddles. Or they do, but it doesn't actually fucking matter because of all the murder. That's just a fact of life. Sorry, Connor. 

"You're supposed to be at work today, you know, Lieutenant." 

"Fuck off." I said, and immediately felt bad about snapping at him. It shut him up anyway. He gave up and let me pass out on the couch. I sort of wanted to see how long I could stay on that couch. Maybe I could just lie here until I died. Probably not but it was worth a try. I stared at the ceiling. I was such an emo piece of shit. I used to hate the emo kids, back in high-school. I was the douche-bag jock stereotype, pretty much. I didn't see it at the time but I was. I mean I wasn't the star of the football team or anything but I played basketball and I made fun of the unpopular kids and I had my own little group that basically fucking worshiped me. I wondered what sort of kid Cole would have been if he made it to high-school. He'd probably be a nerd. He was a nerdy little kid. He used to like catching bugs and looking up what sort of bugs they were in this big book we had. I got rid of the book later. It kept staring back at me whenever I was just minding my own business. I kind of wanted someone to bludgeon me to death with that book. It would have been more subtle. 


	8. DCPD

I went back to work the next day because Jeffrey said I'd be fired if I didn't and as much as I didn't care I still got antsy about it. I was feeling pretty fed up with the department anyway and just about everybody there was tap-dancing on my last nerve. Fowler had hired some of the police droids back.

"You really still wanna work here?" I asked a lady standing by the wall. 

She shrugged. "Not many places offer pay at this point." 

"Huh." I said. Well at least he was paying them. That was something. I still didn't exactly like seeing them around but I didn't like that I didn't like it so that was a start. It was murder on my gut though: feeling uncomfortable about how uncomfortable I already was. I couldn't think of anything else to say so I wandered off. I felt like sort of a jackass, but I _was_ sort of a jackass so I was being honest anyway. It made me even more annoyed that Connor couldn't come back but this random woman could. Connor was a fucking war hero or something but what had this woman ever done? Patrolled traffic? Why should she get her job back while Connor sat and stared at the TV and moped? If my house wasn't already kinda depressing, it would have been with Connor there, frowning and barely moving. 

Some of the androids went out on patrol or something and I sat down at my desk and looked over my terminal. 

You'd think it'd be chaotic these days but it was quiet here. Up front at the desks was a mess but I was far enough away that it was mostly just background noise. A lot of officers hadn't come back to Detroit. Then again a lot had. Enough that there were people I recognized milling around or getting snapped at by Fowler. Jeffrey was in an even shittier mood than usual lately. Right now he was chewing out some poor guy who's name I couldn't remember. I couldn't hear what they were talking about but I could see Jeffrey yelling and jabbing his finger in the guy's face. I hated when Jeff got like this. It was why we couldn't hang out anymore. That and the fact that I was a drunk mess he felt like he had to take care of and who yelled rude things that I couldn't remember in the morning. 

The androids still didn't have guns, so I guess the law hadn't made it that far yet. That was sort of annoying. Like, there had just been this huge revolution or whatever and all these people talking about change and fastforward to the next year and any possible "change" still neck-deep in red tape. It was bullshit. People talked and whined and bickered and debated but nothing ever changed. Well. Okay. Some things changed. For instance, the whole concentration camp thing was over. But no-longer-committing-genocide seemed like a fairly low bar for the government, even by my standards. 

I didn't even really know why I was here. I fucked around on my phone and played one of those stupid pop-the-bubble games. Person booked a couple of androids for trespassing or someshit and I got a vague feeling that it was bullshit but I kept my head down because I was a worthless sack of shit and I was getting pretty close to a new highscore that I didn't actually care about. 

Later on some AJ-somethingorother came in and I took his report about being harassed by some antiandroid thugs. I wrote everything down but I knew perfectly well that we'd never find the guys. There was too much bullshit going down for a couple of delinquents to get into trouble shoving one android around. 

Downtown there was some sort of riot and some of the officers went out in riot gear and came back covered in various colors of blood. Mostly blue. There was a lot of blue. 

Someone finally noticed me sitting on my ass doing nothing and I had to actually investigate a murder. Some Russian guy with a weird name I couldn't pronounce. He was lying in his front yard, in pieces, like he'd been fucking ripped apart. There were a bunch of dead or almost-dead androids without legs in a few places lying around the house and from what we could piece together, there had been androids _with_ legs, but otherwise...the same, who had killed the guy after they got loose. Androids weren't legally people yet, which the department seemed to read as making this technically not self-defense. I wondered if that also made it technically not murder and therefore not my fucking problem but I pretended to give a shit and took all the stupid statements about androids that were probably all dead in camps now anyways and I got emailed some weird disturbing memories so I could pretend to care about tracking down exactly how the "murderers" had probably wound up dead in a ditch somewhere anyway. I didn't want to just leave the androids sitting around the interrogation room but I wasn't sure what to do. Gavin suggested the evidence locker because Gavin wasn't loved as a child or something and I dropped them all off at some old church that had become some sort of android community center. My life got fucking weirder every day. 

When I got back to the station Gavin was still looking for the androids because he wanted to grill them again and he got pissy. 

I decided to call it a day and head home because I was exhausted and I didn't feel like dealing with Gavin's bullshit anymore. 

 

 

 

 


	9. Formerly

The one thing I was still pretty proud of was the task force I used to run. It wasn't enough, obviously. Red Ice was still an epidemic, obviously. But I think I did an okay job of actually solving some actual problems. I didn't find the doctor though before everything went to shit. Maybe I was as much to blame for what happened as anyone else. Probably I was. I basically killed my own kid. It shouldn't have surprised me when I turned out to be a murderer. I was already halfway there. Halfway if I was being generous with myself and putting off most of the blame on the doctor. Who I did definitely blame. Maybe it was possible for us both to be 100% percent responsible, since we both 100% failed and blame and guilt and death wasn't a matter of grade-school math. Grade-school math homework was actually probably the only thing relevant to grade-school math. I always had a calculator in my phone anyway. Everyone did and if they didn't it was because the person themselves was a calculator. Sort of. Maybe.  


	10. Partner

"I'm not making any promises." Fowler said. "I can reverse this at any time and I might have to, and I can't give you a gun." 

"Yeah yeah" I said. I could tell Connor was listening about as much as I was at this point. 

Fowler sighed. "Welcome to the DPD, Connor." He said it like he was admitting defeat, which I guess he was. 

We left the office and went back to our desks. "Congratulations, kid." I said. 

"Thank you, Lieutenant." 

"What'd I say about that?"

"We're in a professional setting. I think it would be-"

"Okay okay fine. You win." I waved him off. "Whatever floats your boat...Detective." 

He didn't quite laugh but he had that goofy looking smile and that was close enough. 

"Look who's back." Great. Gavin. Just what I fucking needed.

"What do you want, Reed? An autograph?"

"An explanation. What the fuck is that thing doing here? It's a terrorist." He said, folding his arms and looking smug. 

"Fuck off, Gavin." I said, because I sort of knew by now that Connor probably wouldn't. "I don't wanna hear it."

"Hey, I'm just asking a question." Gavin said. 

"The answer is up your mothers ass. Go find it yourself." I said.

"Cute. You spend all day on that or you just steal it?" 

I turned back to my work. I was done feeding the trolls. Gavin must have been done too because he rolled his eyes and walked away. 

* * *

"First day on the job behind you. We should celebrate." I said, getting up from the desk. "Oh, fuck you can't drink um..." I was about to suggest karaoke but Connor cut me off and said

"No. That's alright. We can go to a bar, if you want."  

"No health warnings?"

"Since you're celebrating, I'll let it slide." He said. 

"You'll let it slide huh? And _I'm_ not celebrating. _We're_ celebrating. Where should we go?" 

"I don't know. I've never celebrated before." He said. He was so fucking awkward. It would have been hilarious if it weren't so fucking sad. 

"Shit okay. Let's uh...Hey! Ben! How should we celebrate Connors new job?"

"Huh? He got it? Oh! Hi, Connor!" Ben said. 

"Hello, detective." Connor said, even though he was also a detective, which made the whole thing sound pretty stupid, if you asked me. 

"Hmmm...I dunno" Ben thought about it. "I guess he can't drink?"

"No." Connor said.

"Well, you could always take in the atmosphere. Hang out. Y'know?"

"Kareoke bar." I suggested since no one was coming up with anything. 

Connor's little circle thingy blinked yellow a couple of times and he said. "There's one with good reviews not far from here. We could go there?"

"Sure." I said. "Might as well." 

And now I guess Ben was a part of our little group. That wasn't so bad. I hadn't really hung out with Ben outside of work before but I'd always sort of wanted to. He was one of those guys everybody wanted to be friends with, I think, but I couldn't really figure him out either. Like, what was going on under that chipper attitude? Who the fuck was he? It was sort of unnerving but I liked him anyway. 

Kareoke was fun, especially after a few drinks, and surprisingly I didn't end up ruining it or getting into a stupid argument or anything, so that was nice. 


	11. Deceased

"Nothing" Connor had said. "There would be nothing." I kept thinking about that. It  wasn't like I hadn't wondered before but he sounded so sure and I keep thinking maybe Cole really doesn't exist anymore and what scared me the most was I couldn't even really entertain the thought because it was too awful, and thoughts like that usually ended up being true. So maybe it was. But that couldn't be right. It couldn't be real. I'd see Cole again. I had to believe I'd see Cole again or I'd end up finding out sooner rather than later. Or not finding out. If there was nothing. I would never know. I wouldn't be around to know. Nothing. But Cole was everywhere. Anywhere I went I still thought about what he'd think about it. I thought about building pillow forts with him. I got so mad once when he wet the bed and yelled and now I wish I could go back and just hold him and tell him it was okay. He was just a kid and these things happened. I wish I could him that I love him. Not loved. Love. Always. No matter how long he'd been gone, I'd always love him. I kept hoping he was okay, somewhere in the universe. He wasn't, I didn't think so anyways, but I hoped anyway. He was my son. I love him. It still hurt. I couldn't do anything about it, I'd learned. It just hurt and hurt and kept hurting. Everyone said it would get easier with time. Maybe it did, a little, but he was still my son and he was still gone and nothing fixed it. I didn't visit his grave. Almost ever. I felt shitty about that. I liked knowing where he was buried. I liked paying more money than I really could afford on some swanky hunk of granite. But I never visited. I should have visited but every time I thought about going I ended up sitting in my car, parked at the old playground, blasting KBD loud enough to drown out most of my thoughts. Connor asked where I was going and I always told him "Out" and whenever I came back sober I could tell he was relieved. I didn't know how I felt about it. He asked me if I was seeing a therapist and when I said no he said that I should. I didn't know how to explain that I couldn't. I couldn't sit across a table and tell some blank faced or sympathetic person I didn't even know about how Cole was the sweetest kid they'd never meet, and that he was dead, and how he shared his toys with other kids, and I was in hell,  and how when he hugged me, even though he was tiny, tiny even for a six-year-old, I always felt safe. 


	12. Pet Dog

Sumo gave a halfhearted "boof" and left the window to take a nap in his favorite sunny patch a few feet away. 

"Yeah you really showed that kid in a stroller, didn't you, Sumo?" I said. Sumo was a good dog but he could really get on my fucking nerves sometimes. He was sweet though, and even when he barked, or smelled like the fires of hell, at least he wasn't talking at me or judging me, probably. Dogs were good like that. No matter how fucked up you got, dogs still thought you were perfect. Maybe they worried about you sometimes, but otherwise they were okay. 

I sort of wondered if that was why I liked Connor so much and immediately felt bad for it. Connor wasn't a dog. Connor was a person. That still felt weird to think but it felt weirder to realize that it felt weird in the first place. That made no sense and I could barely follow my own train of thought, but it was close enough to a coherent idea that I didn't care. The big takeaway was that, surprise surprise, I was still a bastard. Somebody call KNC. Whatever. 

Connor had taken over feeding Sumo after I forgot a couple of times. I wanted to be mad at myself, and I was mad at myself, but I was also relieved, because that way Sumo wouldn't starve to death just because I was a depressed, piece-of-shit, slob with no organizational skills. I told Connor he didn't have to do that, but it was pretty half-hearted and I was relieved when he insisted. For some reason, I could solve grizzly murders all day but the idea of just feeding my dog was like climbing Mount Fucking Everest. I couldn't explain that, beyond just saying I had a really worthless excuse for a brain that couldn't even fuck up consistently. Connor seemed to get a kick out of feeding Sumo anyway. He did a better job taking care of that dog than I ever fucking did. 

I would never actually admit this. Never. But...I got jealous. Of Connor. Being Sumo's new favorite. Sumo. The dog. I was jealous because the dog liked Connor, maybe better than me. So, just to be petty I maybe sort of started taking Sumo on more walks. He was this big old dog and he couldn't really walk super well, but just around the block he'd mostly be okay as long as it wasn't too cold out. Connor insisted that Sumo should like the cold okay, based on his breed or fur or something, but Sumo disagreed. 

It ended up okay. I guess. I mean I wasn't jealous anymore. At least not as often. We still sometimes got into weird unspoken competitions, trying to see who Sumo would pay more attention to, but I just took Sumo for more walks and it was pretty okay. Sumo wasn't obsessed with walks anyway. Mostly, he wanted to nap, which was perfect as far as I was concerned. He'd get up on the couch (I yelled but he didn't care) and lie on my lap and Connor's and maybe crush my legs a little bit and we'd watch bad reality TV. 

 

 

 

 


	13. Age 53

I had a cold so I called in sick. Connor offered to stay home and make sure I was alright but I told him I didn't need a babysitter. My nose was runny and gross and I was surrounded by used up tissues before noon. I missed being a kid and taking breaks every few months. Why couldn't real life be like that? It was unfair, was what it was. I was old. I needed a month or so to just nap. What did kids need breaks for? They had plenty of energy. They thought they were tired but they should try being 53. 53 was tired. It wasn't like I'd gained any energy as I got older. I was ready to retire and die as soon as I'd lived through 2016, if I was being honest. Everyone was. But we kept going because we had to. 

It started raining sometime later that afternoon. "That's a mood." I told Sumo, gesturing to the sound of raindrops on the roof. Sumo didn't respond much, but he sort of looked at me when I said his name. "Don't worry about it. Just talking." I told him. I don't know why I was talking. There was no one there to hear it and my throat was sore anyway. 

Connor got back late. It was a busy day, he said. He made me soup. It was some of the worst soup I'd ever tasted but he looked so hopeful and it was warm and Sumo was sitting on the couch with us so I didn't have to work to hard to pretend I liked it. I kept my cool. Told him it wasn't bad. Toasted him awkwardly with the spoon. It was still raining and somehow that made me feel safe, the sound of the rain on the roof, but the three of us dry and warm inside. It was so cheesy it should've been on a Christmas special cartoon but I was okay with that anyway. I could use a little cheesiness.

Connor was trying to get me to cut back on drinking, so I was a little more sober than I'd like to be. 

He'd also taken my gun. Not the one I used for work but the one I fucked around with when I was drunk. I didn't miss it so much anyway. He needed someone to watch his back anyway. Connor had the worst self-preservation of anyone I'd ever met, except me. 

 

 


	14. Human

Connor took a bullet on the job and I just about lost my mind. He was okay. Thank god, he was okay. But I didn't realize until he got shot that not one person on the force knew any shit to help him. We all had basic first aid and emergency training for humans but negotiations were nowhere near that kind of thing for androids yet. So I just sat there on the drive home staring at the bullet-hole and thinking how lucky I was it hadn't hit anything important and feeling like a useless sack of shit. I found some youtube videos after that. Explaining how to patch up an android. Nothing fancy but some basic shit that I figured I should know if I was gonna run around calling myself any kind of police. I got some supplies, some of that blue blood stuff and a weird little toolkit, and stuffed them in my desk and in my glove compartment and called it a day. The thing about watching the youtube videos was, I felt sort of shitty about it. I mean, a lot of them weren't made recently, and so there were just these...bodies. Corpses, I guess. Just lying there while some guy prodded around them on the camera and talked about how much cheaper it was to repair yourself than bother replacing them or how sometimes you just had to cut your losses and try for a warranty and I almost threw my laptop across the room. Eventually I found an okay video but it didn't cover too much and it seemed to have some sort of affiliation of Cyberlife, which felt really wrong, but fuck, it wasn't like I was fucking paying to watch it or anything so I figured it didn't make me a complete asshole. I was a detective. It was my job to find shit out. Especially weird shit that made me feel like a murderer just watching. I think what bothered me most was, well two things. 1) Knowing I wouldn't have given a damn not too long ago. Would have thought that the whole idea was a waste of time and effort. and 2) The kids. Not in too many videos but in a few, there were kids. Not human kids you know, but YK whatevers. Kids. All dead eyed and staring straight ahead or lying in pieces on tables. They were so still and there were all these tools laid out next to them and I almost gave up and stopped watching but I guess it was sort of like a train wreck. I mean, I could have closed the laptop and forgotten about it, except the whole reason I was doing this in the first place was because I was scared shitless, so just being reminded of that and staying in the dark wouldn't exactly help me a shit ton, right? Anyway, I figured out basic first aid or whatever and that felt important. Maybe if I did my job well enough from here on out I could make up for being a sack of shit before. That was a stupid fucking way to look at it and I knew it. The people who died because of me were fucking dead and nothing would magically make that all fucking better, but I figured maybe I could sort of balance the scales and make myself a marginally less worthless sack of shit overall. So I watched the stupid how-to repair videos and felt sleazy as shit about it. 

  

 

 

 

 


	15. Man Food

I looked like complete shit, so the day started off pretty normal. I could have showered if I felt like it but I didn't have that kind of energy so the world was just gonna have to deal with it. Gavin made sure everyone noticed and I slapped him back because I was Hangry and he wasn't shutting up. I got in trouble for it but what did I care? Chicken Feed had been shut down so I couldn't go there anymore and Connor had packed me a bagged lunch like I was a fucking twelve year old. I opened it up. 

"What the hell is this?" I yelled across the desks. 

He looked out from the side of his terminal. "It's a salad with-"

"I can see what it _is_. I mean why would I eat it?"

"Your dietary habits are somewhat...concerning." He said. "I took the liberty of putting together a more healthy alternative to your usual choices." 

"Well don't. I'm not a rabbit." I said. "It's none of your fucking business how I eat." 

"Then you don't want the salad?" He motioned to take it back.

I yanked the salad back. "Hey! I didn't say that. I'll eat it if that's all there is. Fuck off."

"Sorry, Lieutenant." 

"Just don't bother me when I'm hungry." I said and forced some of the salad down my throat. To be honest, it was marginally better than going hungry. 

 

 

 

 


	16. 1.89 m

A woman came in to make a report. Rose Chapman. Her friend was missing. I took her statement. She was hesitant. 

"I'm sorry." She said. "I'm just not used to trusting the police." 

I laughed, "Enough to say you don't trust us apparently." 

"My friend...is an android." 

"Don't worry. We'll find whoever it is. Just tell me." I said, hoping I could deliver. 

I didn't voice or act on any of these things, because I wasn't Reed, but here are some things I noticed about Rose Chapman:  She was pretty. Very pretty.  She was smart not to trust me right away. I liked that. It probably put her on the right side of things. While I was sitting around on my ass or hunting innocent people down, she was either helping them or at least figuring her shit out faster than I did. She wore her wedding ring on a necklace. Was it wrong to hope that wasn't just a quirky symbol of a happy marriage? I mean, I felt bad that her spouse was probably dead, but I also didn't feel  _too bad_ , y'know? Also, she was almost the same exact height as me and my mind instantly decided to let me know that this would make kissing more convenient.

Anyway, none of that actually mattered because she was just here to report a missing person and I wasn't Reed, so I was just going to take her statement like a goddamn professional. 

We were at the desk and Connor decided on that moment to let me know that my heart-rate was up and ask if I was alright. 

"I'm fine. Shut-up."

"You should refuel." He pushed another paper bag at me. 

"Connor, I don't want another salad, okay?" I turned back to Rose. "Sorry, you were saying?" 

She nodded. 

"My friend. She still just goes by Chloe. She's an ST200? I...She didn't show up to meet me for plans we had. I called her and...she didn't pick up. That might not sound like much but...she always picks up. I went by her place to see if she was there but no one had seen her for about a week iether." 

Shit. That sounded bad. "Okay. We'll check it out. Where did she live?"

"She was staying at an old church, it-"

"I think I know the one." I said. Rose smiled nervously.

"Anything else that could help us identify her?" I asked. 

"She still has her LED." Rose said. "She usually wears a yellow sundress." 

* * *

 

We went to the church to ask around. Before we could even talk to anyone someone approached us. That girl Markus was dating. "What the fuck is that doing here?" She asked. It took me a second to understand the question.

"The Lieutenant and I are here on a case." Connor said. 

The woman folded her arms. "Is there a reason you couldn't just come here?" 

"He's my friend. I'll make sure he doesn't do anything to upset you." 

"He's here. He's upsetting me." 

"Tragic." I said. "Have you seen-"

"Connor asks the questions." She said. 

"Right. Okay. Con?" 

Connor stepped forward and picked up the questioning. The woman, North, hadn't seen anything. 

Simon next. I got the feeling maybe it wouldn't be so easy to find him and talk to him, if Connor and he weren't buddies in the first place. He'd actually seen her. Apparently she was going out to meet someone for coffee. Well, to watch them drink coffee, and hadn't come back. Simon wasn't sure who though. He pointed us to a couple of Chloe's friends. A heavily injured AX400 and a model I didn't recognize who still wore the uniform, which said MP600. 

The MP600 didn't know anything but the AX400 said that Chloe'd met some guy online (of course she had) and had gone to meet up with him. The guy's first name was Brad. Or at least he said it was. She had a picture of him that she couldn't be sure was a picture of him, and some online accounts that she didn't fully trust. Connor did the weird no-skin thing with her and got the rest of the information. 

That was about the extent of the progress we made that day and I could see it frustrated Connor even more than it bothered me. I was used to dead ends. Connor wasn't. 


	17. Roughly 95 kg of nerves

I had lost weight since I met Connor and I was actually sort of grateful for the rabbit food for once. We'd found Rose's friend, brought her back alive and safe, albeit now a kidnapping survivor, probably traumatized as hell, and pretty shaken up. Rose had smiled and laughed at my bad jokes that I can't even remember. 

I ran into her again, not long after because Connor had dragged me to some farmer's market thing. Rose had a booth. "Rose!" Connor said. No. This was real life. Not work. We couldn't just go up and bother this nice lady. At least I couldn't. I was a mess. I had been wearing this shirt for three days and. 

"Connor! Hank! It's good to see you again." Rose smiled. She had a great smile. She smelled nice. Weren't farmers supposed to smell like cow shit or something. She had some sort of perfume on though and it smelled really good. I sounded like a goon even in my own mind, just thinking that. 

"Good to see you too. Rose, right?" Like I'd forgotten. I hadn't forgotten. I tried to stand up a little straighter. I had bad posture. 

"Yup. Oh, and this is my son, Adam!" She gestured to a beanpole of a kid wearing a T-shirt with a reference I didn't get, who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. He nodded to me. His head jerked up and down like he wasn't quite sure how to move. 

"Is that a purple carrot?" I asked. Stupid. Of course it wasn't a goddamn purple carrot. What was I thinking. It was probably some weird disgusting thing with a weird disgusting name. 

Rose smiled and nodded. "Uh-huh. Pretty right?" 

"You dye it like that?" I asked, because I was an idiot.

"Nope. They just grow that way! I've always loved purple carrots. My grandpa used to grow them when I was a little girl." 

My grandpa smelled bad and used racial slurs because he knew he was ancient enough to get away with it. I couldn't relate. "Sounds like a sweet guy." I said. What was I supposed to say?

"He was." Rose said. 

"Well my grandpa was a bastard." I blurted out. Before I could really regret it though, Rose laughed. Like I'd said something smart and funny. Oh god, did she actually think I was funny or was that her 'please go away' laugh. Probably the second one. Maybe? I wasn't sure. I could stay for a second and try to figure it out at least. 

"Yeah. He was a real orange carrot of a man. He voted for orange carrot men too." I said. 

Rose found that funny too and not creepy that I was related to a Trump-supporter. I still felt weird admitting it. 

Would Rose even wanna date a white guy? I didn't even like being around white guys. I wasn't stupid enough to pretend I was a "cool" white person who got to be an exception to rules like that. 

"We'll take three of the carrots." Connor said decisively, breaking the moment and shaking my nervous thoughts. 

"Four." I said. I smiled. Maybe I would be willing to go back to the Farmer's Market after all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	18. Blue

I woke up earlier than usual the next day. I'd had shitty dreams. Fumbling around the farmers market in total darkness and I found a little outpost of flashlights. Rose was there and I kept saying stupid shit and she was looking at me like I was an idiot. Her kid was there too, looking even more skeptical of me. I did wake up with a sudden realization about a case that had been giving me trouble. I fumbled around for my phone and left a quick note to myself so I wouldn't forget. When I left my room, Connor was cooking. 

"What the fuck?" I asked him. "You can eat?"

"No." He said, folding his arms defensively, "but you can." 

"Shit. Kid, you don't gotta make me breakfast." I said. It actually smelled pretty good.

"You'll like this." 

"That's what you said about the salads." I complained. Maybe if I was enough of a bitch he wouldn't do stupid shit like this. This couldn't be healthy or whatever the android equivalent of healthy was. 

"Just try it." Connor insisted. 

I sat down at the table and prodded at the pancakes in front of me suspiciously. There were berries in them, I could see, and syrup. 

"What happened to the rabbit food?" I asked. 

"I've noticed you don't generally eat breakfast." Connor said. "We'll work our way up to health food." He winked. 

"Would you stop doing that?" 

"Doing what?"

I sighed and returned to the pancakes. "Never mind." 

Work was exhausting but that was normal, especially now that Connor had me actually getting there on time, which was bullshit, because I'd been perfectly fine showing up late for years now. 

It was an okay day, or it should have been but I was still pretty miserable. Or not even miserable. Sort of empty, I guess. Not good empty though, the way I was always trying to be. Bad empty. Heavy empty. Sad empty. 


	19. Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter is basically just Hank being suicidal, yo

Having grey hair bothered me more than I thought it would, when I was younger. Not enough to actually dye it or anything like that, but it bothered me. I looked too much like myself, with grey hair. It suited me. It was honest. I was old and tired and I'd more or less given up and I looked like it too. That was pretty melodramatic but I never really had my all-out-emo phase as a teenager so I was having it now. I didn't have enough energy for a mid-life crisis anymore, and I wasn't not exactly middle aged either.I was old. I knew that. I could tell. For starters, if I haven't mentioned, my hair was grey. Like an old guy's hair. It was a stupid thing to get hung up on. I knew that. I wasn't a teenager. I shouldn't expect to look like one and my priorities should probably have focused a little more on all the people who died because I couldn't get my head out of my ass but it bothered me, okay? I mean all that stuff bothered me too, but the hair thing was just something I didn't like. I'd thought about dying it. But that was stupid, because I shouldn't care anyways, and I didn't wanna hear Gavin's running commentary on it. So I was old. What else was new? Not me (hahaha). At least everyone could see how tired I was, like this. Nobody expected me to be leaping over buildings or anything. They could see that I was just about done. I felt older than 53. Older than I could even describe. That was stupid. I felt ancient though. I felt like I'd seen everything there was to see and now I was just sitting around waiting for an after-credits scene that wasn't coming. Like when I went to see Infinity War. God, that was a while ago. I was so old. I was so tired. I was fed up with everything. I mean, most things anyway. I wished Connor hadn't taken my gun. I missed Russian roulette. That was pretty stupid of me but I did. Instead, I ordered a pizza and watched old shows I'd already seen a hundred times. It wasn't as interesting. I was so bored. I'd seen this one and this one and this one. All they ever played anymore was reruns. I was sick of reruns. I missed Russian roulette. Maybe I should just man up and pull the trigger? Except Connor would miss me. Would Sumo notice? Would Connor be surprised? Dissapointed? Would he miss me? Really? For a second I wanted him to. But that was stupid. So stupid. I wasn't gonna do that. At least not right now. Besides I was pretty close to finishing this latest case and I kinda wanted to get rejected by Rose first, just so I'd know for sure that I didn't have a chance. And there was Connor, who apparently cared about me. Stupid kid. Why was I like this? I was so sick of being like this. 


	20. Hank Anderson: Born Human

I had to get a drink. It'd been too long. Not even a whole day but that's just how it was. I knew Connor would be disappointed. Welcome to the club, Connor. I was disappointed in me too. Not enough to actually stop, or anything. I didn't have that kind of restraint, not at the moment, but I was disappointed anyway. I must seem like such a waste of freewill to him. Boo fucking hoo. I needed a drink. I went to Jimmy's. He was happy to see me, his "best customer", because Jimmy was a bastard. He was one of the only people I knew who actually liked me, or acted like he did, but that didn't mean I didn't sort of hate him, even if I spent a lot of time around him. Going to Jimmy's was weird now. The sign on the door was still up. I didn't like that. Not anymore. But Jimmy's was basically home by now, so I was screwed. I went to take a piss and used my keys to scribble out some of the graffiti scratched into the bathroom walls. Technically I guess that was also vandalism but I technically didn't give a single solitary fuck. Jimmy cut me off. I don't remember when. I couldn't drive home though so I just sat out on the sidewalk feeling sorry for myself. My phone was all blurry and I couldn't get the buttons right. I tossed it and, joy, it cracked. The screen was splintered into an ugly spiderweb. Ugly? Pretty? I dunno. It might have been pretty if it wasn't so fucking annoying. The thing...the thing...My brain struggled to form some sort of coherent thought. I grunted and stared at my phone. Stupid. I went to a store. One that wouldn't care if I was wasted and got some more to drink. It was something to do. I'm not sure when or how I got home. I just know I woke up and it was the middle of the day. Everything was too bright and there was Advil and a water on my bedside table. I felt even worse than I had last night when I went out in the first place. There was a bunch of noise coming from the kitchen. Way too loud. I almost yelled "keep it down" but it came out as a halfhearted mumble. I took the Advil. Thought about skipping the water. Decided I could drink the water. I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked. Fuck. It was too bright too. I still didn't know how to turn that down. I flinched away from the phone and put it down. Picked it back up again. Texted Connor.

 

Me: [I'm a Grown-ass man]

Connor: [Congratulations.] The reply was instant. 

 If he was gonna be an ass about it, so was I. 

Me: [Wow. Watch out John Mulaney. Competition.]

Connor: [You should go back to sleep. You need rest.]

Me: [I don't need a fucking nap.]

Connor: [Good. Breakfast is ready.]

Me: [Fuck off. I don't need you to babysit me.]

Connor: [If you don't want it I can feed it to Sumo?]

Me: [Fine, I'll eat it.] 

So much for trying to be less of an asshole. I was a dick. That was our whole _thing_. Connor was polite and helpful, and I acted like an ungrateful sack of shit. It was really beautiful. I hoped Sumo liked his breakfast because getting out of bed was just about impossible right now. My head still hurt. 

I got out of bed. 

Connor had an unbearably cheery attitude that felt totally fake. He was such a weird dude. He could be totally earnest one second and the next it was like he was a struggling improve student with absolutely no talent, except he was just improving real fucking life or something. My metaphors weren't great right now. Whatever. You get the idea. 

He'd made eggs. At least I got there in time. If Sumo got scrambled eggs, the house wouldn't smell right for days. 

"Connor..." I should just say thank you, like a polite human being.

"Yes?"

Here I go. Just like a regular person saying regular person things. Then again...I didn't wanna like...fuel this, whatever "this" was. It seemed weird. Bad weird.

"Nevermind." 

Connor smiled anyway, like he was in on some sort of joke. As they used to say, I didn't care for that shit at all. It was fucking unnerving is what it was. What the fuck did he know? He didn't fucking know me. 

The eggs were good anyway, I guess. Not as gross as the usual rabbit-food stuff he tried to make me eat. There was even a little bit of cheese. He was trying to get me to cut down on dairy but I guess I must have looked pathetic enough to earn some cheese. Maybe I should get blackout drunk more often. More often? Was that possible? I laughed inwardly at my own stupid dark monologue. 


	21. Detroit Central Androids

My hair was a birds-nest and I didn't give a fuck. I washed the eggs down with (fucking surprise) some whiskey and felt marginally better, though not much. Connor gave me a disapproving look but didn't say anything. I knew. He knew I knew. I needed to fucking stop. Maybe tomorrow. He'd already called in for me, since I wasn't gonna make it to work today. So I just sort of sat there like a fucking lump. That was it. I was gonna quit. Or at least cut back. I'd said that more times than I could keep track of but maybe 100-something time was the charm. I was sick of missing my life. That was a weird thought since I didn't even really  _want_ my life, but if I was gonna stick around for the time being, I may as well not spend it hurling my guts up and sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. Instead, I'd go to a shrink's office and feel sorry for myself there or whatever the fuck I was supposed to do. I didn't have a great track record with therapists but it was worth a shot. Maybe Connor would lay off me if I went too. Then again...it just sounded like so much fucking work. I sort of hated myself for what I was about to do but...

"Hey Connor..."

Oh Christ this was so fucking embarrassing. 

"Yes, Hank?"

"Nevermind." Connor shouldn't have to go out of his way to get me help anyway. I could do it my damn self if I wanted it bad enough. At the moment, I didn't. I wanted another drink. 

While Connor was at work, I managed to work up the energy to fucking google for it. I found a website that seemed okay. Some reviews. There were a few different choices. 

One was an android. Maybe I should drag Connor there and see if she could figure out what was going on in his head. He seemed pretty upset, in a weird, quiet way, a lot of the time. 

I wasn't actually ready to fucking trust an android to poke around in my head though. I was aware that this made me a shitty person but I couldn't actually fix that right now. 

I scrolled down. Nettie Ortiz. I googled some shit. Yeah. Not a good idea. I'd investigated her brother's murder and if it came up I'd probably end up actually saying what I thought of the guy, even if he was dead...so... yeah that was a no-go.

Vincent Stanley. I took one look at his smug face and decided he wasn't for me.

Elaine Lambert. Good reviews. No creepy over-enthused smile. I'd give her a shot. I scribbled down a sticky note and slapped it to my laptop. 

Exhausted from doing almost nothing, somehow, I slumped down on the couch and closed my eyes for a minute. 

When I woke up Connor (goddamn him) was steaming broccoli. _Broccoli_. 

"How was work?" I asked. 

"Good." He said. "Several more of the androids from the station have been hired on as official officers in training. They're allowed to use guns now." 

"No shit?" I said. 

Connor seemed...happy I guess. "Yes. I'm...glad to have other androids working at the station." 

Fuck. That was gonna take some getting used to. Good though. I should get used to it. Maybe I could tell "Elaine" about that on the off chance she turned out not to be a hack. 


	22. Deviant RK800 Connor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on "Hate Crime" by Gabriella Johansson

I went back to work the next day. Lucky me, a case came in. A murder, (they were finally letting us just call it murder), at the Cyberlife Zoo. I hadn't been but it was supposed to be Cyberlife's next big moneymaker. Extinct species on display. Exclusive Cyberlife business. Etc. Et fucking cetera.  Chris was there. He rattled off an explanation. "They found her like this not thirty minutes ago. No witnesses."

I looked at the crowd standing at the edge of the crime-scene angling for a look. Some of them were trying to get pictures on their phones. One guy held his kid up for a better look. Like this was a fucking exhibit or someshit. 

"Of course there weren't." I said. 

On the wall, in Blue Blood the words "Android Scum" had been drawn. If I could still see that..."Shut down the zoo. I wanna talk to everyone who was here." I sighed. 

Chris glanced at the lingering crowd. "You sure?" 

Okay, so 'want' may have been a bit of an overstatement. I  _wanted_ a fucking burrito. "Yeah." I sighed. "Yeah I'm sure." 

I turned around and immediately wished I hadn't. "God! Connor what is wrong with you?" 

"It's the fastest way to-"

"Yeah yeah. It's still gross." I told him. He didn't even look at me. 

One of the techs leaned over the body. "Wasn't wearing it's stupid triangle. That's a crime isn't it?"

"Just do your job, genius." I said 

"Her shoes have been stolen." Connor pointed out, standing up from where he was crouched by the body. 

"She looks like that...famous lady." I said. "Markus' girlfriend." 

"Yes. They have the same facial mold, but this is an AJ700, a different model."

"Alright. So...weird killer. Stole her shoes. Graffiti probably makes this a hate crime. Killer used blue blood, probably means they don't know it evaporates."

Connor nodded. "Meaning it probably wasn't someone very familiar with androids before or after the legal changes." 

"It's a start." I said, but I didn't feel particularly optimistic. There were plenty of people who didn't know shit about androids and hated them anyway. For fucks sake that would've described  _me_ a few months ago. Maybe it even described me now, on a bad day, in the back of my mind. Maybe if we could get someone to actually talk we'd have a shot at figuring this out. That was about all I could think of. 

 

 


	23. Detroit

The Gears were doing well. That was something at least. It was foggy and miserable out but The Gears were still doing real well. We split up the interrogation load. There were so many of them. It was a long fucking day. 

First person I questioned seemed genuine about not having seen anything. Apologized a bunch for not being able to help more. "Don't apologize. Just tell me what you know, and you can go home." I told her. She told me almost nothing and went home. 

The second person was shifty as hell. Said she didn't see anything. I was done with that shit. I got in her face and fucking raged until she admitted that she'd harassed the lady a few hours before she died. "I...I was there with a big group. We were talking shit. I didn't see where all of us went but we were pretty pissed off at the plastic. Somebody might have left to finish her off." 

"You wanna start naming names or you wanna be an accessory to murder?" I bluffed.

"I didn't...I-That's not fair!"

"Life's not fair." I said. 

She gave us a list. 

 

 


	24. Jeffrey Fowler

I couldn't take Jeffrey seriously. Sure, technically he was my boss, but I'd known him long before then, when we were both nobodies. It was pretty hard to give a damn the way I was supposed to when he gave me a "talking to" or whatever it was he was trying to do.

"These are serious accusations." The android trafficking case had hit a speedbump. Jeffrey. Jeffrey's stupid rules were the speedbump. 

"C'mon Jeffrey." I said. "We both know whose behind this. Let me go in for a warrant at least." 

"Do you know the kind of statement that'd be making? The law is already barely hanging on by a thread. Just find the guys doing the heavy lifting and shut them down."

"That's not how it works and you fuckin' know it." I told him. 

"Well if you wanna keep your job, that's how it works now." 

I flipped him the bird and went back to my desk without waiting to be excused. 

How the fuck had I ever been friends with that guy? 

I knew he stuck his neck out for me, plenty. Hell, if he wasn't in charge I'd have been fired plenty of times by now. 

He was still an ass, and he was still wrong about this fucking case. 

 

 

 


	25. Hank Graduated Top Of His Class

Kate and I never talked anymore. That was better, to be honest. She tried to reach out every now and then, but I wasn't the man she knew. All we were for one another were reminders that our son was gone. I remembered how happy she was for me, back in the day. We met when I was in the academy. I thought she was perfect, at the time. She was smart. Could actually carry on a conversation and hold her own in an argument. Our first conversation was an argument. That was how I fell in love. It sounded sappy and stupid and pathetic now, looking back on it, but at the time, if I was ever in love with anyone, it was Kate. She moved out of Detroit, after the divorce. Before that, though, she was a first responder. She left work to look after Cole. I missed her sometimes. Not the current Kate. The one who forgot she ever had a kid and moved on like it was nothing. Not the Kate who nagged me and pushed at me when all I wanted was some space. Not the Kate who blamed me, however much she insisted that she didn't, for what happened. I missed 2029 Kate. I missed her laugh. I missed the party she threw when I made detective. I missed vacations and I missed how she played guitar and I missed the person she was before she lost Cole. I didn't miss After-Kate. I missed Before-Kate like crazy. I wondered if she missed any version of me. Not this one. Maybe Before-Hank, though. That idiot kid who thought  he was hot shit just because he was top of his damn class and knew how to kiss-ass and catch whoever he was pointed at. Probably. I missed Before-Hank sometimes too. Kate and I had that in common, if she still thought about me at all. I didn't know.  I used to care so goddamn much. I didn't know where the fuck that went. I was so excited about everything. I thought I was gonna conquer the whole fucking world. Now I couldn't conquer breakfast. I sat in my bed and I thought, ' _I don't know who the fuck I am anymore._  I sure as hell wasn't whoever I was in the 2020's. I could tell you that fucking much. That guy was dead, the lucky bastard. He died in a car crash, with his kid. I was what got left behind. I was a fucking shell. It reminded me of the other Connor. He had all of the kid's memories but it wasn't him. The guy was just...fucking...I don't know. I don't fucking know...That whole situation was fucked to hell in ways I didn't even wanna think about. Ever again. It was over now. It was over. As much as anything was ever over. Which wasn't much. It kept coming back and no matter how much I drank, I never really forgot anything that counted. I'd got a fucking great memory. Always been that way. _Don't think about it. Don't think about anything._ But the thoughts still came. They always did. 


	26. As Validictorian

You'd think, with all the fancy awards and shit, that I'd know how to make a relationship work. That I'd know how to make a life work. I didn't. I fucked everything up. I always did. I hadn't been good at just about anything for years now. I was a has-been and the remains of that, the raw talent I had, the smarts I once used, were still there enough for me to recognize exactly how washed up I was. That was poorly phrased but my thoughts often were. I had done my share of thinking and the years of drinking had muddled me a lot. I wasn't fucking eloquent. I was a lonely, divorced, old man who should have been fired years ago. I was not particularly interested in going back to the farmers market and giving Rose the chance to figure all that out. Rose was a smart lady. I could recognize it. She had that sharp look in her eye. The way she carried herself. I wanted her to see the same in me, but I wasn't sure it was actually there that much anymore. Maybe a little of it, but not enough to impress a lady like Rose. Rose could afford high standards. Rose could do better than me by a lot. She was beautiful and intelligent and kind. Okay, I'd only met her a few times, so I was probably getting ahead of myself, but I liked her. I knew that I liked her, at least.  Enough that I didn't want her to see who I was. Unfortunately, Connor had decided that we were going to the farmer's market and that we were going to stop by her stall and the kid never fucking let anything go. My poor window was proof of that. 

"Hello, Hank, Connor. It's good to see you." Rose said. 

"Hey." Her son, what was his name? Adam. Adam nodded to us. 

I nodded in reply. 

"What are you here for today?" Rose asked. 

"Oh just...looking around, you know." I said. My brain was blank. I couldn't think of anything to say. Damn Connor and his stupid determination to sober me up. I'd never have a comfortable conversation again. I wasn't used to trusting myself to talk without a buzz going. God, I was a fucking addict. How the fuck did I get here? Rose had her life together, or seemed too. 

"Go right ahead." Rose smiled at me. She was working. She wanted us to buy her veggies. Of course she smiled at us. We were customers. 

I looked over the stuff that was for sale. Didn't know the names of half the weird green plants. 

"Try a blueberry." Rose suggested. 

"How much?"

"Just try one. If you like it you can buy some." 

I shrugged, trying not to care that she was being nice, because it probably didn't mean anything anyway, and tried a blueberry. It tasted like a blueberry. 

"Damn." I said. "That's pretty alright. How much?" I was such a goddamn sucker. 

"For a small box? Ten dollars." 

I forked over the cash. She handed me a little plastic crate of berries."Here you go."  And a piece of scratch paper. "And here's my number." 

Wait. Really? Shit. 

"Mom! Are you kidding?" Adam said.

I fumbled for the paper and almost dropped it. 

"Oh. Uh um thanks. I'll. I..." I smiled. 

"Pick me up on Friday. Three thirty. There's a nice cafe around here. I'll text you the details." She smiled at me. 

"Mo-om!" 

She ignored him. 

"Uh. Yeah. Will do." I said. "See you around." We left the booth and I was grinning like an idiot. I had no right to smile like that. I was an adult, not a teenager. I needed to calm the hell down. It was a phone number, not the holy goddamn grail. Besides, as soon as I told her what I'd been up to last year she'd dump me like that. Still...A date. That was more than I'd expected. Rose was smart, but apparently not as smart as I'd thought. I'd do my best to live up to her expectations until I had to spill and tell her the kind of ass I really was. 


	27. Detroit City Police Department

I told Connor my theory. 

"That would make sense." He said. "Cyberlife has taken a massive dip in profits since the uprising." 

"Yeah well not massive enough apparently. Fuckers won't give up the ghost already. Shit, Connor, what the fuck are we supposed to do?"

"Let's just investigate where Fowler tells us to and look for evidence there. You never know when they might slip up."

"They're not gonna fucking slip up. We gotta _do_ something." 

"We can't." Connor's voice lost it's fight and I felt like I'd kicked a puppy, which wasn't fair because it wasn't  _my_ goddamn fault things were like this. 

"Hey, cheer up. We'll figure something out." 

"Yeah." said Connor, like he was getting an idea that could massively screw everything up. "Yeah, I'm sure we will." 

* * *

 

Connor was the one who got the confession out of the killer, "Aaron Alfaro", from the Cyberlife Zoo. We split up the suspects and I guess he got lucky. Or unlucky, depending how you look at it, since obviously the guy was a great conversationalist. Connor, god knows how, actually goaded the guy into bragging about it. It was gross to listen to but definitely impressive.

"Nice work." I told him.

"We're missing something. It wouldn't have been just one of them. We need to figure out who else was involved." 

"Shit." I said, running my hand over my face. He was right. "Okay, where the fuck do we start?" 

"We bring in more of them for questioning. I'll see if I can get anything else out of Alfaro."

* * *

He couldn't get anything else out of Alfaro and worse, I had to listen to Alfaro peddle his uncomfortably familiar bullshit. Was this what I sounded like? _Jesus_. No wonder I was so fucking unpopular. 

* * *

The case went cold quick, and Fowler said that, since we got our man, we had to close it. I offered to punch someone again but Connor said that that wasn't exactly how it worked and that he'd be fine anyways. 

"It's called a joke, asshole." I said. 

Connor didn't bother answering. 

This wasn't fucking done though. I was gonna keep a damn eye out. I was gonna do my fucking job if it got me fucking fired. I didn't know why, but here I was. Maybe I just liked pissing everyone off. 

 


	28. He Started Out As a Beat Cop On The Streets

I had stopped counting my near death experiences, at this point. Shit happened. It was Detroit. It had been like this long before I was here and it would be like this long after I was gone. As much as things changed, some things were dependable. Detroit was chaos. It was a city constantly at odds with itself. History had grown around it that way. After a while you either got used to it, or got killed because you weren't. Even then, it could still kill you eventually. That was just how it worked. Take Antony for example. Good cop. Knew what he was doing. Didn't matter. He still got shot and he still died. Like I said: shit happened. Being a detective wasn't much safer. I wasn't thrilled that Connor was so insistant on it. He was the stubbornest son of a bitch I ever met though, except maybe Jeffrey, so there wasn't much I could do. It didn't help that he had to wear a fucking target on his chest everywhere he went. A lot of people hated androids. A lot of people hated him, specifically. He shouldn't have been running around working, he should have been hiding out in a fucking bunker with Markus or something. Another problem with that was, Markus was also not willing to hide in a bunker. He went to TV interviews and meetings with the president and all sorts of public shit that I wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot-pole if I were him. Was having zero sense of self-preservation an android thing? I mean, there was also that lady who ran across the highway, so maybe. Then again she did that to try to _escape_ so maybe it was just my dumbass kid and his little revolutionary buddies. Not kid. Partner. Jesus. Glad I hadn't said that one outloud. I would have never lived it down. I could just picture Connor's stupid face "Do you view me as a stand-in for your son, Hank? You should talk to a professional who can help you." Et cetera et fucking cetera. The only thing less pleasant than my own thoughts showed up at my desk. 

God, what the fuck did he want?

"Hey, saw the paperwork you did on the Alfaro thing. Looked a lot less sloppy than your usual. Your pet do that one for you?" 

I was about to tell Gavin to shove it when Connor spoke up. "Don't you have anything better to do, Gavin?" 

"Hey," Gavin threw his hands up in mock-surrender. "I'm just looking out for you. I wonder if the old fucker would even keep you around if you didn't do his homework for him. Worth asking." He smirked and left. 

"Fuck you too!" I yelled at his back. 

"Hey, kid, you know that's bullshit, right?" 

"Of course." Connor said, not very convincingly at all. His LED was a concerned yellow.

"I keep telling you I can do that shit myself." 

"Yes." His LED circled yellow one more time then back to blue again. "Yes of course." 

"Good. Don't let Reed get inside your head. That's what he wants." 


	29. Red Ice Etc.

Red Ice deal gone bad, it looked like. Pretty open and shut. Connor ID'd the fingerprints of the killer on the knife. The genius had _left_ the knife there. Without even wiping it down. Probably too out of it to even realize how bad he'd fucked up. I didn't feel too bad for the dealer. I wanted to catch the junkie, obviously, but I couldn't say I felt too fucking bad for the dealer. I'd arrested the guy a couple times back in the day so we hadn't exactly been buddies. It's always weird to see somebody you know dead, but after a while you sort of got used to bodies, and if it was the body of someone you hated, then at least it isn't one of your friends, or some stranger who'd never bothered you. The guy wasn't too far away. Curled up in some den with a bunch of other junkies who scattered like birds as soon as we got there. Connor chased the guy down pretty quickly. Easily even. It was an easy day, as far as arrests went. 


	30. Cole

 I'd been having a lot of shitty dreams lately. Dreams about Cole. Cole making lopsided paper snowflakes one winter. Cole frowning over something and saying "I need your help." Cole as a tiny baby in Kate's arms. Cole crying his eyes out because he got a bad grade on one of his first ever science projects. He was fucking heartbroken. I told him it didn't matter so much (I knew I shouldn't be saying shit like that and Kate glared at me for it) but he said of course it mattered. I dreamed about that, specifically, and then, because it was a dream, we went to the store to get ice-cream to cheer him up and he got lost in the isles and I couldn't find him and when I did he was all bleeding and hurt and bruised and I knew I knew he was dying and I couldn't do anything and I had to do something and I woke up and the first thing I thought was "Thank god; It was just a dream. He's okay." And then I remembered.

Connor made me go to work anyway. 

"It doesn't matter, Connor. It's all bullshit anyways."

"Your job is an important part of your life, in addition to being our collective primary source of income, given the minimal wage provided to androids. Of course it matters." 

I almost lost it right there but somehow the fight went out of me almost right away. 

I wasn't any fucking different from those Cyberlife fucks, in a way. I was using Connor. Maybe I loved him. Maybe he was the only real friend I had. Maybe I'd fucking die for the stupid kid. I was using him and all of those things were just ways I was using him and I knew it. 

But we were too deep in it now to back down so I just got in the car with him and told him I was too tired to drive and that he could pick the music if he wanted because I was past caring. All I could hear anyway at that point were Cole's last words. Weird words a kid should never have had to say or think about. "Whatever happens, it won't be so bad, Dad. I was scared of first grade because I didn't know what would happen, but it was sort of fun. Maybe this will be like that." 

What the fuck was he thinking? First fucking grade. Goddamn.

His stupid goofy face lit up and he picked some of the worst goddamn music I'd ever heard. I wouldn't make that mistake again. Not unless he really needed a reason to smile. 

I didn't know how to care about anyone anymore without trying to replace Cole. I'd forgotten how to care about people without pretending they were my son. My dead son. My son. So that was gonna have to be enough for both of us. Sorry Cole. Sorry Connor. 

I hated myself for it, but hey, what could I do? 

I wished I had been a better Dad. I wished I had been a worse dad. I wished I had never made Cole do his homework that he'd never end up needing. I wished I had let him eat pizza and ice-cream for every meal because there weren't a lot of meals anyway. There weren't enough rainy days. I let him fake a sick day once so we could spend the day hanging out. I should have done that again. He was six. Even if...even if things hadn't turned out the way they did, school barely mattered at all, at that age. 


	31. Suicidal Tendancies

Cole was the perfect kid. I wouldn't have changed a single tantrum. If he had just lived a little longer I know he would have done something great. As it was, every day he was alive was amazing. One time, when Sumo was a puppy, he bit me. I was so angry but Cole insisted that Sumo was a good dog. He said there were no bad dogs. That "Doggies are too stupid to be bad." Then he burst out laughing. Kate told him not to laugh at my pain, which, of course, only made him laugh louder. Kate and I didn't talk much, after Cole died. We couldn't bring ourselves to say anything, half the time and when we did it wasn't enough. Our son was still gone. Nothing would bring him back.

It hasn't really gotten much better over time. They all say it's supposed to, whoever the hell "they" are. "Time heals all wounds." Someone tells me every other fucking day. Or "It gets better." That was Jeffrey's favorite for a while. So far, that has yet to actually come true. Time will not make me forget my son. Nothing in this universe could make me forget my son. I know. I've tried. Part of the problem is, the second I start to forget, I have to rush back to remember. If his voice starts to fade, I make myself watch videos until I pass out. If his face starts to fade, I take out the picture. I want to forget, but somehow, forgetting is also the worst thing I can imagine. I'm trapped in the past, replaying everything up to the point my life went to shit. The present is hell and I'd rather not live there. In the present, my son is dead. I try not even to think the word but sometimes it fills up my mind anyway. Dead. Dead. Dead. Sometimes it's all I can think. 

* * *

I was dreading my date with Rose. I didn't even know why I'd agreed to it. Maybe I should call and reschedule. I didn't want to stand her up. She was nice. She deserved better. I wanted to go out with her, sort of, I thought. I also never wanted to move ever again. It was a toss up. Maybe if I wasn't such a lazy piece of shit. Damn it. It was later today. I needed to either start getting ready or call to cancel. Damn it. Fucking damn it. My stupid fucking mindset always fucked me over. I made myself fumble for the phone and found Rose in my contacts. I wasn't going to make it to our date tonight. It couldn't be helped. 

Connor found me sitting in bed staring at my phone a few hours later. 

"Oh. Hank. I thought you had a date with Rose tonight."

"Cancelled it."

Connor frowned at me.  "I thought you liked her."

"I thought so too." I said. "I mean. I did. I just wasn't in the cards tonight."

"Do you have something else to do? If it's paperwork I can-"

"It's not anything, Connor. I just can't."

"Oh." Connor's little forehead light thingy circled yellow. 

I woke up the next morning because Connor wouldn't leave me the hell alone. "Get up, Hank. You're going to be late for your appointment."

"Idon' have an apptment." I mumbled and rolled back over onto my stomach.

"I took the liberty of scheduling an appointment with a psychologist." Connor said, in that calm fucking bullshit way of his, like that was somehow his fucking business. 

"You did what?" I said, sitting up, energized by my annoyance. 

 

 

"I've found a counselor with very positive reviews. I considered simply downloading a home therapist patch, but, given our friendship and living situation, decided it might be better for you to see a professional." 

"What?" I said. 

Connor pulled the covers off of me, and the cold morning air woke me up even more. 

"Get up." He demanded.

"What the hell, Connor? I don't need you to fucking babysit me." 

He handed me my phone. "Then call and cancel yourself." He said. "What do  _I_ care if my best friend drinks himself to death?"

"Connor, I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere."

"Really? Then you should have no problem seeing the doctor." 

"Shit. Look if I go to a session will you shut the fuck up?"

"Fine." Connor said, though I got the feeling that was a half-truth at best. 

"Okay. Shit. Give me a minute." 

The doctor was a human woman (thank god, I wasn't ready for a robo-therapist or fucking whatever) set up in a room in a big ugly office building. Her name was Ada and I would have liked her if she weren't a therapist. She had this sort of captivating quality. She looked at you and whatever bullshit you were trying to put up, she saw through it and she made you see through. She didn't use any stupid jargon, or at least she kept it to a minimum. I didn't talk about much specific, I just told her I'd been bummed out for the past few years and that I didn't wanna talk about why. She said that was perfectly okay for a "first session." I told her that this would be the only session. She locked eyes with me the whole time and I kept trying to look away but I couldn't. 

"I would recommend against that." She said.

"Course you would." I tried to joke. "Your paycheck depends on it." 

"This isn't a joke, Hank." She said. "If you want your mental health to improve, you need to be willing to put in effort. That means coming in here. That means time." 

"Yeah yeah. Look." I said. "I'm just here for my kid. My partner I mean. He's the one who scheduled this and he's the one who actually gives a damn, okay?"

"Then would you prefer not to talk during this session. Everything you say or don't say in here is completely confidential."

"What, so I'm just supposed to pretend to get better to fucking placate him? You'd do that." 

She shrugged without looking away from me. "That's up to you." She was fucking challenging me. 

"Shit. Fine. I'll think about coming back. Think about it." I said. 

We spent the rest of the session talking about how miserable I was and how I'd had to cancel my date yesterday, which was obviously just buckets of fun. I don't know how I stayed awake for the whole thing, except that I was so fucking uncomfortable. By the time I got back home I was ready to go into hibernation. I collapsed on my couch, put the tv on in the background, and fell asleep before I even settled on a channel. I woke up around three in the fucking morning hungry for donuts and went out to a 24 hour donut shop. I finished almost a whole small box in one go, which was a pretty good overview of my general diet as a whole. I fell asleep about halfway through my third donut like the fucking slob I was. When I woke up Connor had put the box away, or thrown it out, more likely, which meant he'd seen me like that again. Joy. Why he stuck around was anybodies guess. I hoped he wasn't grossed out. Could androids even get grossed out? Whatever. 

It was a shitty Sunday. For some reason I kept thinking about the lady who tried to shoot me a few, what, weeks ago? And her little kid I'd killed. If there was any justice in the fucking world I'd be rotting in a prison cell at least. The whole fucking thing last November was a mess. Connor had a fucking excuse. Me? I'd had every chance to stop what I was doing but I fucking followed through to the last fucking second. It was disgusting, was what it was. It was my fault all those people were dead. Shot to death, lying at the bottom of the lake. Fuck. There was no coming back from that. Not for them and certainly not for me. I was a monster now, more than ever. Nothing I could do would change that. Hopefully Rose had lost interest and would move on to someone worth her while. 

I had work the next day but I couldn't get any goddamn sleep. Every time I started to, I had more weird fucking nightmares. Cole, mostly. Connor too though. Mashups of the two. Connor dying in the car crash. Pulling a gun on Cole at that park. It all slushed together in my mind. 

I stopped by Chicken Feed on the way to work on Monday, which Connor wasn't happy about. 

"Just be happy I'm coming into work at all." I told him. 

I wasn't hungover but I still had a raging headache and I couldn't focus on work to save my life. The files came in and I just stared, like an idiot. I was such a fucking idiot. I shouldn't even be at work today. I felt like shit. I was shit. How the fuck was Connor still working with me? I almost fucking shot him. Did he really not give a shit? If he didn't that was probably my fault too. I was a terrible influence. He probably thought that just because I wanted to die, he should to or something. Like he was somehow the same as my washed-up ass. Fucking idiot robot. Android. Whatever. 

Ada told me the next session we had that she wanted me on meds. I told her that that wasn't going to fucking happen because I didn't want to find out what happened when the happy pills inevitably got mixed up with alcohol. I wasn't drinking every morning anymore, but it was still a lot.  I'd had a drink just that morning. It was harder with Connor monitoring the fucking house. 

 

 

 

 


	32. Jeffrey Fowler

It was a miracle that I hadn't been fired, or at least transferred yet. Jeffrey, as much as I hated to admit it, must really have been going out of his way to look out for me, letting me off with warning after goddamn warning. It had become a habit at this point, and I wasn't sure how to break it. I'd just be going along around my day and then I'd suddenly realize I was fucking up somehow. Usually it involved Gavin. Yelling at Gavin. Threatening Gavin. One time that week, I punched Gavin. I also threw a stapler across the room once, not at anybody just out of frustration. Apparently that was also frowned on. I didn't know why I was like this but after a while I didn't know how to not do it either. I sort of wished Jeffrey would just snap and suspend me, not that I'd ever admit that. It would be simpler. I was doing better lately though, and he didn't want to jinx it so that wasn't going to happen. I may have thrown a stapler, but I'd actually been at work, before noon, to do it, and that meant no suspension for me. Weird thing to be pissed off about but here I was, pissed off. Story of my goddamn life. 

What was really annoying was that Connor got actual fucking results, so to speak, and I had to sit there like an asshole, getting away with punching people. 

"Jeffrey, this is bullshit. You know Reed started it."

"Started it? This isn't preschool, Hank. Connor assaulted a fellow officer and that officer is demanding I do something about it." 

"He defended himself! And Reed had plenty of chances to bring this up before you fucking hired Connor." 

"Look, I'm just cutting his pay. Not forever, just for now."

"There's nothing to fucking cut!" I complained. "You barely fucking pay him." 

"Hank, if Connor wants a raise he can talk to me about it himself. I don't wanna hear this from you. Get out of my office."

"Fuck you too, Jeff." I said and left, confident that I wouldn't even get a warning. Somehow that pissed me off more than anything the fuck else. Not just at Fowler. At myself, for some goddamn reason that I couldn't even figure out. It wasn't my fault Jeffrey was acting like an asshat. 

 


	33. Sumo

I loved Sumo. He was such an idiot. He smelled. He'd been my only real friend for a good three years. I had this sort of unspoken battle going with Connor to see who would be Sumo's favorite. Connor was more "fun" and dragged Sumo along on walks, but I was better at ear-scratches. One thing, Sumo was huge, but somehow, Connor had mistaken him for a fucking lap dog. He'd just about crush a human if he tried that shit on me and he seemed to know it, but he could sit on Connor's lap and watch tv with us no problem. It was fucking unfair was what it was. Connor didn't seem to particularly care when I told him so. He just laughed and told Sumo he was a "good dog", the traitor. 

"Sumo, attack" I said, knowing perfectly well that there was no way in hell Sumo would do that. 

Sumo licked Connor's face so I counted that as a half-win.  Stupid dog was too sweet for his own good. Or my own good anyway.


	34. His Freetime At Home With His Dog

My next move to win over Sumo was to buy him treats that were too "unhealthy" for Connor to ever get him. Greasy processed shit. I also let him have unfinished pieces of my burgers whenever I had leftovers. Take that, Connor. Hows that for fun? 


	35. At Various Bars

Since I was trying to cut back on drinking, I didn't really know what to do with myself a lot of the time anymore. I called up Rose and apologized for bailing, tried to explain. She said it was okay and offered to reschedule. I told her I thought she could do better but she just laughed so now we had another date planned. "This is your last chance though." She said, and I could tell she was only half-joking. That was fair enough. I was surprised she was still interested. She didn't seem like the type to wait around while some asshole wasted her time. So I had dinner plans but that wasn't for a few days and in the meantime I still had to try to occupy myself without dying of pure, sober misery.  Connor kept trying to suggest things but he didn't really get it. 

"Maybe you could take on some extra hours." He suggested. Extra fucking hours. 

"Not happening." I told him. 

"Alright." He sounded sort of almost offended. He could suck it up. I wasn't working fucking overtime on top of all the extra goddamn work I was trying to piece together behind Jeff's stupid back. 

* * *

 

I set up a meeting with Ada a day early because I couldn't fucking wait it out, not that I was fucking excited to see her or anything. I just didn't know what the hell else I was supposed to do. 

"Hey, Ada." I said, slumping onto the couch across from her. 

"I'm glad you're back." Ada said. 

"Don't get used to it." I warned her.

She sort of frowned at me. 

"Yeah, yeah. Cry me a table." I told her. She didn't laugh. I could see why Connor picked her. She was more fucking stone-faced than he was. 

I shifted on the couch uncomfortably "C'mon, Ada, what do you want from me?" 

"I want you to work on your problems." Ada said. Well, at least she wasn't bullshitting me. 

"Yeah. You and everyone else in this town." 

"Including you?" She sounded hopeful there for a second. 

"Yeah." I admitted. "I guess so." 

She smiled, just a little. She was so fucking quiet and it was driving me nuts. 

"Yeah. Square fucking zero and I haven't fucked up yet. Hooray." I said, twirling my finger around like a drain. 

"Don't undercut yourself." said Ada. "That's an important first step." 

I resisted the urge to respond with a crude gesture. I mean, I was technically hiring her so I should at least pretend to be professional, maybe. 

* * *

 

Depression naps took up a lot of my time lately too, except they ended up being closer to depression-stare-at-the-ceiling-for-an-hour-or-so's because I couldn't fucking get to sleep dried up like this. 

* * *

Work took up all of my goddamn time but not enough of it and that didn't make any fucking sense but I'd given up on things making sense a while ago. 

 

 


	36. Jimmy's Bar

I hadn't gone back to Jimmy's for a while now and I sort of felt bad about it. Really, Jimmy probably didn't give a damn except that he wasn't getting my money anymore anyway but still, for all he knew I was dead in a ditch somewhere. It wouldn't exactly be a surprise. More like the sort of thing you kept expecting to hear about. I'd been a mess for a long time and Jimmy knew it. I thought about going back just to tell him I didn't wanna stick around at his stupid wanna-be Mos Eisley Cantina and listen to stupid people talking stupid shit anymore but that I was fine and alive and shit but that just seemed douchey and pointless and I'd end up drinking anyway. He'd have heard about it if I died anyway. Being tied to Connor and a Police Lieutenant meant that if I died it'd be in the news. I just felt bad ghosting like that. Then again, fuck it, sometimes you just had to move on with your life and forget everyone else. God knew I'd left people behind before. 


	37. Chicken Feed

Chicken Feed closed down and it didn't come back. It was fucking tragic and Connor was smug. 

"It's gone." I said, staring at where it used to be. 

"Well,-" Said Connor

"Don't even start." I cut him off before he could speak ill of the dead. 

He nodded but he still looked obnoxiously happy.

"There's still other greasy fucking food for me to eat." I said but it sounded hollow. Chicken Feed was gone. No more Chicken Feed burgers. Ever. Fuck that. I mean, what the fuck was going to cheer me up on a shitty day if I couldn't go there? One of Connor's fucking salads? I thought the fuck not. Sometimes I just needed some stupid comfort food and this was my place. I could be dramatic about that if I fucking wanted to. 

RIP Chicken Feed. Forever in our hearts, quite possibly literally, clogging up my arteries for the rest of time, the way food was meant too. 

 


	38. Ben Collins and Carlos Ortiz

I assumed it was a glitch when this all started, to be honest. Something in the programming that went wrong or got hacked or  _something_ but not...a person. And then Ben showed the the crime scene and the android lashed out in self defense and I pushed that down down down in my mind because if that was true then nothing was true. Nothing made sense anymore. I ignored it, willfully, but it got harder and harder to ignore when shit like that kept happening. Maybe someone read too much sci-fi? Though it'd be funny to make androids act like people? But...the more I saw...the more it seemed like nobody could or would fake something like this on that scale. If it were Cyberlife...well they'd killed reliable customers so where did that fit in? Why not have their brand-new pretend-citizens-to-be get along with their customers as much as possible? If it were Kamski...then why did he have such a hard on for Connor and his little experiment? If it were a random hacker...they wouldn't have been able to spread the thing across the country so fast. It didn't add up. There was only one answer but I was scared of it. Why I was scared of it, I couldn't tell you. Okay, maybe I could. Maybe it's pretty simple. Maybe the answer, the obvious one, the one staring me in the face, also happened to be one that would make me a pretty big douche if it turned out to be true. The stickers and complaining and threatening and everything. If deviancy was...real...it'd be-It'd mean I had been doing all that to people. At the end of the day, finding out that I was an asshole, or more of one, should not have been a surprise, but I wanted not to know, so I didn't. Great detective work right there. Just forget an answer because you don't like it. How the fuck did I ever make Lieutenant? Probably because I was, at the time, an insufferable kiss-ass. That and I used to do some actual good from time to time. I mean, I have a lot of regrets, sure, but getting some Red Ice off the streets isn't one of them. That shit-Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Yeah, I'm glad that I arrested those bastards when I got the chance. I can be proud of that at least. I mean sure I barely made a fucking dent in the trade (bullshit statistics aside, anyone could see that Ice was everywhere, even now) but hey, at least I got a fucking medal right? Fuck. I was such a fucking waste of oxygen. I'd killed that guy. I'd killed that guy and he hadn't even had a name. And then...the Jericho. All those people. That one woman screaming at me. I could bitch about that surgeon all I wanted but...I killed a child. Every time I thought about it I felt fucking sick. How the fuck do you move on from something like that? I can't exactly apologize to her and even if I could, that'd only make things worse. Hey, your kids dead but I'm sorry so I guess it's all better now. Yeah. Not how that worked. Sorry didn't mean jack shit. Not when her daughter was gunned down or lying at the bottom of the lake or in pieces from an explosion. I knew that. I knew it. If it had been me, I'd have felt just the same. I wished she'd made the shot. I wished she'd gotten some closure, even for a second. Maybe, if she had killed me, things would be, well, not " _right"_ exactly, but it'd be something. And I wouldn't be here, feeling like shit. I'd be dead, and we'd all be better off for it. Oh god, I killed a child. Olivia. She was dead. I killed her. Her mom told her she'd be safe there and she should have been. Even if I wanted to talk to Connor about it, I obviously wasn't going to. The kid blamed himself for so much stupid shit that wasn't his fault and I wasn't about to add to that. I'd seen the fucking Captain America movies. I knew it wasn't Connor's stupid fucking fault. It was mine and I was just gonna have to deal with that. I'd really fucked up. That last one, I couldn't even blame on not knowing. I knew, I just cared about Connor more. The worst part was, if I had it to do all over again, I don't think I could tell Connor I wasn't gonna help him. Not with his life on the line. I didn't have it in me. I didn't know exactly what would happen. I tried not to think about it. But if I could have told you that a little girl, maybe a lot of them, was going to die because of me, I would have done it anyway. That was the worst part. I really was a sick bastard and knowing it wouldn't fix it. I could do one thing though. I took the victims, the people I'd gotten killed, off of the wall. I doubted they could be saved but that wasn't my goal anyway. I just took them to the old church and explained and they took the bodies away. I didn't know if they'd be stripped for parts in an emergency or buried or if maybe they could be saved but it didn't matter anymore. I'd done what I could do. Too little too late but I'd done what I could do. 


	39. HK400

I still couldn't stop thinking about that android who beat his own brains. I keep going back and trying to figure out what I could have done differently. How I could have made sure he got the hell away. Maybe there was no way. Maybe he was screwed the second Connor stepped onto that crime scene. But shit, that was just...there had to be something I could have done. Even after he was arrested. I could have let him go, when no one was looking. I could have done a lot of things. But I didn't. Because, at the time, I was too selfish and bitter to give a shit. So I just questioned him a little and then let Connor take over the whole operation and fucking forgot everything again because that's what I do. It was just another thing I couldn't get out of my head now. Great. I really needed more of _those_. Fuck my life. I'd taken him to be fucking buried or whatever. It should have been over. But this wasn't a mess I could clean up. It was still on my hands. It was sort of fucked up that, after all that, his body still ended up at Jericho. Like I was somehow making fun of him, even when I was trying to do the right fucking thing. I'd taken him to his people but they were people he'd never met. I'd taken him home to a home he'd never been to. He'd spent his whole life in Ortiz's house and then he'd died in a cell. There was no good way to end that story. No respectful way to put him to rest when his whole life was a mark of shame against the human race. I should have done something. I should have helped him. There's no such thing as an innocent bystander. They're myth, made up to make jackasses like me feel comfortable. The only innocent bystanders are children to young and stupid to know what's happening. Even if adults could be, I wouldn't be. I was a part of this. The arrest is still on my record, even though it was really more Connor's work. I'm not enough of a dick to try to shift the "credit" over to him anyway. It'd do nothing but bring up ugly shit and make him feel guiltier than he already does. It was Connor's work, but it was my fault. I know that. I'm not so fucking blind and stupid and evil that I don't fucking know that. I am a murderer. I didn't ever really expect to be a murderer. I had revenge fantasies, sure, but I knew I would never act on them. I thought I knew I would never kill a person. I thought I could manage that, at least. I set the bar about as low as it could go, and I still banged my head on it like a low fucking doorway. I was a murderer. A terrorist. A fucking genocidal maniac. And the only problem anyone seemed to fucking have with it was that I got a little hotheaded about it from time to time when it didn't seem quite right. I could pretend that I did the right thing. I could say that at the end of the day that nameless man was a murderer. But I knew he wasn't. I knew he acted in self defense. I knew that it was life or death and he was trapped and there was nothing else to be done and I killed him sort of knowing that all along. "So the android was trying to defend itself?" I'd asked. Defend itself. I knew what I was saying. I told myself I didn't see it that way but, for all the shitty things I was, I was never very stupid. The way his arms were ripped open. The little burn marks down his arms. I saw it all and I took Carlos' side. Why the hell did I do that? Because I was angry? Because I somehow conflated the guy across from me in the interrogation room with everyone who'd killed my kid. I saw him and in his face I saw the icehead doctor and the android and myself. But he wasn't any of those things. He only ever even met one of them, and they sure as hell weren't his friend. My mind was fucking caving on me and I wanted to go get drunk but instead I was in my room staring at the ceiling wishing that Connor hadn't poured all my booze out and knowing perfectly well that I could get more but that I wasn't supposed to and it would only make everything worse anyway. Then again, did I really deserve to get better? Probably the fuck not. I mean, so what if I wrecked my life? So the hell what? I was-Connor would be upset. He was young, and stupid, and for some reason he'd gotten attached to me. So attached that he'd risked his stupid revolution trying to protect me from his evil clone. What a stupid move. He wouldn't have made that kind of decision if he'd been even one year old. But he wasn't, so he risked his revolution, his whole fucking species,  to help me, even knowing that I would be dead soon anyway and didn't really care one way or another. So yeah. Connor made stupid decisions and got attached to me. Maybe he'd be better off if I just-but then again, if I shot myself here, in my bed, I wasn't stupid enough that I couldn't guess who would find me. Connor. I couldn't do that to him. But drinking-but then again he'd just watch me fall apart and think that it was somehow a tragedy and by thinking that he'd make it one. So I made myself keep staring at the ceiling until I couldn't have moved if I wanted to because I was so fucking tired. It took so much energy, hating myself. A real workout. I was a regular fucking athlete. That made me laugh, a little. I should open a window. I couldn't make myself move. It smelled fucking terrible in here, when I was sober. Drunk, I didn't really notice, but the less I drank, the worse my room, my house even, stunk. I should shower more. I didn't deserve showers but maybe showering more was basic roommate courtesy at a certain point. Maybe in a little while. I should tell Rose upfront, on our date. It'd be sort of a weird opening but it was only fair. 'Hey, just to let you know, I'm kind of a murderer and I've killed a lot of people and at least one was a child. Just a little heads up. Oh, do you wanna get french fries? Let's get french fries.' Yeah that'd go over real well. That'd be a real hit. I was almost looking forward to being rejected, in a weird way. I mean I knew it'd be horrible, but I could stop getting my hopes up. I really liked this lady. She sort of just made sense, in a completely confusing way. She was so nice. She smelled nice. Not perfumey nice. Real nice. You could smell that she worked in a garden. I liked that. She wasn't used to trusting cops. Was hesitant to tell me her missing friend was an android. She had a warm, soft, laugh. She had a smile that hurt to look at. She rescheduled when I bailed. I mean I barely knew her, and I knew that but I also knew that I at least wanted to know her. Even if she wasn't so great, she sure as hell couldn't be worse than me. Her hating me was gonna suck. Bad. I knew that too. I guess I thought I was a real smart guy, knowing so many goddamn things. I knew I was a fuckup. That was the main thing. What I didn't know, what I'd give anything to know, was how to fix it. But I couldn't know that, because the truth was, there was no fixing it. No bringing back the dead. They were gone and I was here, living with it. There was no getting past that.  


	40. Gavin and Officer Miller

Miller wanted us to forget that he shot all those deviants, back before things changed, that night. He wanted us not to even know about it. But I knew. I knew he supported them now. And I knew from personal experience that it didn't matter. He and Reed and I were all the fucking same. We were all bigots and monsters and nobody had the moral high ground. I was still judging them though. Especially Gavin, even if he was technically the only one who hadn't actually _done_ anything. He'd tried but he was too fucking useless to be a real threat. Chris though. It felt weird knowing he'd done the shit he had because I was still buddies, sort of, with Chris. As much as I had been buddies with anybody for the past few years. He was always so...nice. I couldn't picture him gunning down innocent civilians. They weren't civilians at the time but, well, you know what I mean. I just couldn't see him doing that. I let him take that android to the cell. Guy probably would have killed himself right there if Chris had kept listening to Gavin's bullshit ideas. I guess it didn't matter too much in the end. I still sort of tried to distance myself from Chris. We couldn't look at each-other right anymore. I wonder if he felt the same way about me. I wouldn't blame him for that. I'd blame him for a lot of things but not for that. I couldn't figure out how to block his number or delete his contact, but I didn't call him to pick me up anymore and I didn't ask him to go out drinking, and he didn't say hi so much anymore and neither did I. It was for the best, anyway. The whole precinct was soaked in shame, but the three of us, we were the center of the problem. And I and Chris knew it. Or at least I think he did. 


	41. Jeffrey Fowler

My "extracurricular" cases, or whatever I was supposed to call them, went cold fast and I had to give up on them. Without the department behind me, and with the amount of crime in the city, it was pretty hopeless. We were overrun with crime. I spent days looking for missing people only to have to give up without a lead. I always kept an eye out for any signs of where they had gone but the cases jumbled in my mind, and worse, it wasn't like I could hand around photos of a face shared by thousands of people. At one fucking a.m. Fowler called for another case that he probably didn't care about. I ended up standing in a bathroom looking at Connor do that gross "sampling" thing with blue blood splattered in the sink and shower. 

"The victim was a WR400." He said. "But her body doesn't seem to be around." 

I tried to stay awake, which is a terrible thing to be doing at a bloodied crime-scene. Why couldn't murderers ever wait til a more reasonable hour. 

"Yeah. The guy who lives here made the call but I think it was probably him." I told Connor. 

"Is he still here?"

"Yeah he's talking to Gavin outside." 

Connor found the body in the drawer under the kitchen sink.

"Anything to help figure out who killed her?" I asked, not quite looking at the body. 

"I think I can reactivate her for a few seconds." He said. 

"Fuck is that...should we even be doing that?" I asked. 

"We have to, if we want solid evidence of who killed her." 

"Shit." I said. "Fine. It's your call." 

I didn't want any part of this whole messed up situation. 

The woman, the WR400 woke up suddenly, with a scream. I'd never get used to seeing dead people wake up scared. She looked like the girls who had run away at the club. Nothing to distinguish her but her hair. 

"Who are you?"

"We're with the police." Connor said. 

"We are the police." I interjected. Connor ignored me. 

"We're trying to figure out who hurt you. Is it alright if I look at your memory?"

"I...okay." She said, extending her hand, skin peeling back. I looked away then back then away again.

Their LED's flickered yellow and red while she shared whatever had gone down here. 

Then she was dead again and Connor stood up. "It was the man who made the call." He confirmed. "She'd been living with him here ever since the revolution...she"

"Yeah?"

"Never-mind." he said. "It's not important." 

"Whatever. Let's arrest this fucker." 

 On the way home I brought it up again. 

"Back there, what weren't you saying?"

"I..." Connor hesitated.

"Whatever it was, it stays between us." I said, hoping I wouldn't regret that promise. 

"She hadn't deviated...I...I left that out of my report. No one would care about what happened if they knew." 

Yeah. That made sense. There was still a lot of bickering going on, even in more liberal circles, over whether rights should really be extended to pre-deviants. "Deviaints" some people called them jokingly. It was considered, in many circles, not to be a particularly funny joke. 

I shrugged "Doesn't matter." 

"Doesn't it? I mean..." He fell silent again. 

"Just fucking spit it out." I said, because that was my stupid version of being supportive. 

"I killed so many of them but..."

"That wasn't your fault."

"It was me." He said. I wasn't so sure about that but this seemed important so I let him keep talking. "I killed them and I still got a chance to...to live and figure out who I was. It's not...  _fair_." He said. Carlos' android had said the same thing.

"Nah. It's not. But you deserve a shot as much as she does."

"Sure I do." Said Connor. Huh. Maybe he was getting the hang of this sarcasm thing. 

"It wasn't you. Look, kid, shit..." How the fuck was I even supposed to talk about this? "You ever see the Captain America movies?"

"What?" He said. 

"The-shit never-mind. What I'm trying to say is, it isn't on you. None of that shit." 

"Whatever you say, Hank." He said, but he didn't sound convinced. 

"I'm fuckin' right." I said. I needed to have the last word here, if he was gonna be an obstinate fuck about this. "I know shit sometimes. I'm fuckin' right." 

He didn't say anything to that, but he didn't look reassured. I didn't say anything either. I didn't know how to convince him. 

 

 

 

 


	42. Head Out For Lunch

Connor made me eat another goddamn fucking Salad for lunch. He'd found some fucking health-food place and I was supposed to just go with it like everything was fine. 

"Connor this is disgusting. This is worse than you eating dead guy blood."

"It's just a salad, Hank." He said, not bothering to give me the analysis-spiel again. 

I forced some lettuce down. 

"We're getting fries on the way home and that's final." I said. 

Connor didn't look happy about it but he didn't argue. He knew it was pointless. I chuckled at his annoyed face. It was sort of nice that he wasted so much time giving a shit what  _I_ ate. Like it mattered. 

"Hey." I said 

He looked up. 

"I know...when we first met I was...kind of a douche. Okay not kind of, I was a huge dick to you and I just...look if I had to do it over again, I'd get my head out of my ass faster okay?" 

Wow. Great apology Hank. I didn't even have the guts to bring up threatening to shoot him. Just "I was a dick". Fuck. I should be a fucking poet. 

"Thank you, Hank." He said. He had this look on his face like that was the nicest fucking thing anyone had ever said. 

"Yeah yeah" I said, wishing he would just go back to normal. "Don't make such a big deal about it. I'm just saying you're less annoying than I thought at first." 

"Of course, Hank." He said, in that way I had learned meant 'definitely not, but I'm placating you, Hank.' 

I grunted but didn't push it. If he wanted to get all weepy over me vaguely insinuating that I regretted threatening to kill him, fine by me. Fucking whatever. I'd like to tell myself that I would never have pulled the trigger but I wasn't sure. I know that I didn't, in the end, but that isn't saying much. I mean, personally, I didn't even get why Connor didn't fucking hate me now that he had his head on right, but sure, whatever, if his revenge was limited to making me eat salad, fucking fine. Not the route I'd go but to each their own. 

"You're fucking ridiculous." I said. "You know that, Connor?" 

"I'm the most advanced android to date." He said.

I scoffed. "Yeah. Whatever. You're an advanced fuckin' idiot." 

He smiled like I had said something nice. I had called him a fucking idiot. What was this kid's fucking problem? He really needed to get out more, if this was what passed for good conversation in his book. Not that I was nice enough to actually tell him that. If he thought I was worth his time, I'd leech what affection I could before he got his shit together and realized I wasn't worth the time of day. That was what I was. A leech. I used people up and then they left. 

Speaking of which, I had a text from Rose. 

We'd been texting. She'd been texting me and I'd been texting back. I wasn't some creep who couldn't stop bothering her or anything. I smiled at my phone. 

Connor leaned in to look and I pulled the phone back towards me. "Mind your own business." I said. 

"Sorry." He responded, not sounding sorry. 

"Sure you are."

I went back to deciding whether or not a smiley-face was overkill for my response and decided to risk it. Texting Rose made me feel a little better. I mean, I'd have to tell her what a jackass I was soon, but for now, it was really nice to just talk to her. 

 

 


	43. Eastern Motel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> whew! lemme tell you, this chapter was a bitch to write.

My date with Rose was making me more nervous than I'd admit, but it wasn't all bad-nervous. I was actually a little excited to see how in particular I fucked this up. What mistakes would I make? Would she leave on the spot or text me later? So many interesting variables to consider. We met up for dinner at a place that I was sort of stretching my budget to avoid taking her. 

She looked impressed. 

"I hope I'm not under-dressed," she said, even though I was wearing my usual stuff. 

"You look good." I promised her. 

She did too. She wasn't super fancy like the rest of this place but she was a more real sort of beautiful. Her hair was pinned back and she had little freckles over her face, I noticed. I usually wasn't crazy about freckles, but on Rose? Rose looked perfect. She was wearing a little sand dollar on a necklace and a big black coat that went down to her knees. She was so fucking out of my league. 

We waited and somebody finally came around to seat us then left us at a booth to try to figure out how conversation normally worked. 

"I know this place is sort of," I gestured vaguely, 

"I like it." She said. 

"Yeah, I mean it's stuffy but they have good food." I said, trying to play down the rush of relief her approval brought. When was the last time I'd been this interested in anyone? 

"So you're a farmer?" I asked, not really sure what to say. My mind had gone blank. 

"Yes. Adam helps me. It isn't much but it puts food on the table." 

"That's really cool." I said. "That you grow your own food."

"Thank you." She said. "And you're a detective."

Oh great. Here it was. The moment. 

"Yeah." I said. "Yeah actually..." I chickened out. "I am." 

"Relax. It's fine. I already knew, remember?" She said. 

"Yeah." I said. "Yeah I guess I just," fuck I was going to have to tell her. "I...there's-I guess I'm just nervous." 

"That's alright I am too." she admitted and it actually made me feel a little better. "It's been a long time since I've been on a date." 

"Oh same here." I said. "God, I don't even remember..." then I trailed off because I did remember. I had a sudden image of myself proposing to Kate. I blinked that away. 

"So?" she asked. "I think you're supposed to tell me about yourself at this point." She smiled a little. 

"Shit." I said, immediately hoping she didn't mind me cursing. "Uh, can I say shit?" 

"You can say shit." She confirmed. "I've heard it all."

"Okay. So...I don't know what do you want to know? I'm a cop. A uh, lieutenant detective." I said awkwardly, trying to figure out what I was supposed to say. "I like greasy food that will probably kill me sometime soon." She laughed a little so I kept going. "I, uh, I live with Connor right now while he's figuring out what to do with himself."

"Adam lives with me too." She said. 

"Yeah? No big plans he's off trying to start?"

 

"No." said Rose. "It's hard enough as it is, these days." 

"Right." I said, instantly feeling like a dick for asking. "Uh, sorry I didn't mean to-"

"No it's fine." She cut me off but the silence at the table was still slightly awkward. 

"So...what about you?" I asked. "Figured out what you're ordering?" 

"Why don't you choose?" She said. "It's been a long day." 

"Ah, fuck now I actually have to think about this." I said, picking up the menu to study it again. Rose probably liked healthier food than I did, at least a little, but then again she was probably sick of vegetables, eating them every day. 

"Uh, fish?" I asked. 

"Hmmm. Tell you what. If the fish here is good, I'll give it a shot." She said. 

"You know what?" I said. "Screw this place. Do you wanna go somewhere else?" 

"What?" She asked. 

"I mean, we can stay here if you like, but there's a sushi bar across the street that's a lot better. " 

Rose laughed. "How's the tempura?"

"Fried goodness." I confirmed.  

We ran from the restaurant, like if we got caught we'd have to stay and eat the crappy faux-italian stuff they were serving. It was nice and Rose was laughing. 

The tempura was, objectively, terrible, but subjectively, perfect.

"Okay." I said, "So it was your turn to talk about you." 

"Hmmm" she joked. "Not sure how much to tell a cop."

"We can place some illegal bets after this, if you like." I said, not even really joking.

Rose laughed. "Is this a date or a sting?" 

"Trust me, if it's a sting," I said "This is the first I've heard about it. Then again internal affairs doesn't love me so..." 

She laughed at that too. "And why's that."

"I...may have punched an FBI agent at one point." I admitted. Bragged, I guess. 

"Punched?" She asked.

"Yeah like...in the face." I said. 

"Oh man. There's gotta be a story here." She said. And my gut lurched because there  _was_ a story. 

"I was...it was...um..."

"You don't have to tell me." Rose said. 

"No...I...uh...I should." I said.

"Okay." She sat back and waited. 

"I was sort of trying to buy Connor some time. It was back in November and he was still sort of...figuring things out."

Rose nodded, and leaned in. My gut churned.

"So Fowler, uh, the captain, told us that the FBI was taking over the whole, 'deviant investigation' and that meant Connor was gonna have to go back to Cyberlife and uh...probably die I guess so he asked if I could buy him some time and I just go 'Perkin's you cocksucker!' and punch him right in the face."

"Ah the old distraction. Can't say I've ever been arrested but I have my share of crazy stories too." She said. 

Okay. So she still didn't know I was responsible for the whole, Jericho thing, but I'd told her a little, at least. She knew at least a little. 

"Like what?" I asked. 

"Okay so...you swear this is just between us?" She asked. 

"I'm not looking to break out the handcuffs on the first date. Sorry. Not that easy." I joked. I instantly regretted it. I probably sounded like a creep, joking like that, but Rose laughed it off, thank god. 

"Okay so...before...everything, I used to hide runaway androids, help them across the border. Do repairs when I could. That sort of thing." 

"Woah." I mean, it had occurred to me but wow. 

"It's not that impressive." She insisted.

"No. It is. I wish I had done that." I said. 

"Really. It was just every so often." She said. "But this one time, I was completely caught. Backed against a corner, sure I was going to jail, that sort of thing. And, and I swear this happened, I just go. 'These aren't the androids you're looking for.'" 

I snorted. 

"It was a joke, yknow? I mean, the cop I was talking to was sort of neighbors with me and we were sort of friends and my brain just sort of spazzed and I made this joke, right?"

I nodded. 

"Well the guy goes, with no sign of a smile, total deadpan. 'These are not the droids we're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.' And he LETS us get away. Uh...sorry I can't give you the guys name." She said.

I laughed. It was a real laugh. "That did NOT happen." I insisted.

"It did!" She said, stabbing a bite of tempura with her fork. "I swear. I couldn't believe it either." 

I laughed. "Oh man. That's insane."

"What you never let anyone get away?" 

"I mean...sure but...damn." I laughed. 

"Oooh you have! Let's hear it." She said. 

"Okay so we were investigating this murder at Eden Club." I started. "or I mean, I say murder but it was probably more, uh, self-defense, yknow?"

Rose nodded. 

* * *

The night went on and somehow we ended up talking about Adam, and somehow that lead to talking about Connor, and somehow, some horrible twist of my own stupid self-destructive tendencies lead to talking about the investigation. That first one. The one I fucked up just by trying at all. I still didn't tell her about Jericho but I told her what my job was. I waited for her to react.

"Hank...I know. I know who Connor is and I know you worked with him and what that meant."

"I killed people, Rose." I told her. 

"Would you do it again?" She asked. 

"Of course not, god I-"

"Then lets move on, okay? All we can do is go forward." 

"Can I kiss you?" I asked, hating how uncertain I sounded. 

"Yeah." Said Rose. "Yeah I think that would be a good idea." 

* * *

I finally worked up the nerve to tell her about the Jericho. I sort of felt detatched from my whole body but I told her. "Look...there's. There's something I should tell you right off the bat, before we see each-other again...I...that time I punched Perkins?"

"The FBI officer?"

"Yeah. It was...it was so Connor could find Jericho. They tracked him there and that's."

"Oh." Rose's voice was flat. 

"Rose-"

"I mean...I'm...I knew I just...I knew some people, a man and his daughter, who survived the raid." She went silent for a minute. 

"Yeah?"

"Yes. They made it out with another android. The girl's mother. She died later though." 

"Shit. Rose. I'm really sorry." I said. It sounded so fucking empty. Like I was sorry and somehow it made it fucking okay. 

"If you hadn't done that," She asked. "Would Connor have survived to wake up all those deviants and turn the tide?"

"I...I don't know. I guess probably not." I admitted. 

"I...okay." She said. "Okay. You saved lives, Hank. I can't hate you for that." 

"I...Rose I wasn't trying to...I mean, look, I hunted people okay? I mean I'd get a call like 'an AX400 was spotted at a motel' and I'd fucking try to find it, uh, her, y'know? That's something I did. Is that really okay with you?" 

"No. Of course it's not. But you saved Connor and he became a hero. Maybe because of you. That's enough." She said. 

"I'm not...I Rose-"

"I like you, okay?" Rose said. "I knew who you were when I asked you out."

"You did?"

"You're Connor's partner, Hank." She said, smiling. "I do watch the news occasionally." 

"Okay." I breathed. 

"Hey...uh." Rose seemed to want to say something. 

"Yeah?" 

"I had a good time tonight. We should do this again."

"Yeah" I agreed. "I mean, absolutely, if you're actually interested."

"I just said I was, didn't I?" Rose asked, smiling at me teasingly. 

"Yeah." I said. "Guess you did." 

I leaned in and she leaned in and I don't know who made the first move exactly but we ended up kissing again. I'd forgotten how nice it was to kiss someone. Or maybe that was just Rose. 


	44. Joseph and Kara

I was glad we never found the AX400 and the YK model back at the motel. I was glad they pulled one over on us and on the guy behind the desk. I hoped they made it. Maybe they were still out there somewhere, hiding or among friends. I'd have liked to think that if we caught up with them, I would have let them go. That Connor would have too, but back then, that early in the investigation, I couldn't say. I'd like to think that I contributed to Connor figuring himself out too, but there was no way of knowing that either. I couldn't just put him on the spot about it. And even if there was a way to get an answer, I wasn't sure I wanted one. I could keep telling myself I wasn't a complete monster if there was a chance. If I didn't know for sure that I'd been nothing but a problem. But maybe surviving that long was what it took for him. Maybe I wasn't a complete failure of a person. Maybe I could still be redeemed. Then again, it wasn't like I could take credit for all the heroic shit Connor did. So maybe not. But then again, if I couldn't take credit, maybe I couldn't take all the blame either. I was a fuck-up, but maybe not beyond all hope. Maybe, if you really looked at my life, I'd come away with something like a net positive effect. Or maybe I was just letting the feeling of kissing Rose last night go to my head. Then again, I'd be the first to admit she seemed smarter than me, and she didn't think I was complete garbage. She thought I was a good guy, even if it was just by accident. Or that I could be, if I kept going. If I tried. I didn't even know if I had the energy to be better, but god, I wanted to. I was at least going to give it my best shot, even if my best didn't turn out to be very great. I might as well try. It wasn't like I had anywhere to go but up. Things were starting to seem like maybe, if I could just keep it together, they'd be a little bit okay. I had a roommate who gave a damn about me, and a big fluffy dog, and, as of the last text I had from Rose, a date next Friday. She wanted to go hiking and I liked her so much that I actually  _agreed_. If you're having any trouble picturing what Rose was like, that should tell you something. She asked me to go hiking and I said yes. I barely even hesitated. I might hate the outdoors but Rose loved it and that was somehow sort of charming about her. Normally, if someone wanted to go hiking, I'd figure they were some wannabe hippy jackoff, but Rose knew her shit. She was a farmer, of course she did. And she wanted me to go hiking with her. Oh man what was I thinking? I could barely walk around the block. I couldn't go hiking. I didn't cancel though. Rose made it worth a try. Yup. That was Rose. She made things worth the try, somehow. 


	45. Chicken with Aabdar

I owed Pedro fifteen bucks and it was stressing me out more than it should. We met up over lunch and I payed up. 

"This your new hangout?" He said, looking around the fastfood place. 

I shrugged. "Sometimes. It's no Chicken Feed but at least it's open." 

He laughed. "Alright. I'll see you around." 

"You too." I said, knowing that he'd probably show up here looking for bets again. I was glad Connor wasn't with me today to get all frowny about it. He also didn't get to talk shit about what I was eating, which, okay, maybe I sort of missed. He'd stayed at the office to finish up some paperwork. Okay, my paperwork. But he offered, so sue me. I was fucking tired and it took him next to no effort so whatever.  


	46. Gary

I felt sort of gross whenever I broke Connor's stupid diet plan. I mean, it was mostly worth it, but I still felt kinda gross. I felt weirdly guilty about it. Like somehow it was my job to eat whatever a stupid android told me to. I don't know. I guess I felt bad because he put so much effort into keeping me healthy and I screwed it up whenever I felt like it. I couldn't handle being "healthy" all the fucking time. I mean, in a twisted way, getting too hung up on that stuff didn't feel healthy anyway. I had to live my life sometimes. I was here for a good time, not a long time. If I followed Connor's advice, I would be bored out of my skull most days. He didn't want me to do anything "bad for me". It was ridiculous. I had to live my life. I heard Gary had opened up a new food-truck in Chicago after Chicken Feed shut down. I wished I could go to that. I actually sort of missed Gary, even. But Chicago was a little far to go for lunch so I settled on some new places when I wanted good, real, greasy food and not the rabbit-food Connor kept pushing on me. 


	47. Abandoned

I spent a lot of time running around in circles in my head, shut in my room, wishing I was drinking but trying to stay sober. I hated myself, but I was sort of trying not to. Trying to put everything in the weird, warped context Rose suggested. That I had ended up helping. Personally, I thought that sounded like bullshit. Like I'd been nothing but a problem but now that it was over, I was spinning some stupid Hans-Landa-esque lie about how I'd been a good-guy all along when really I'd been hunting down innocent people. I kept replaying shit I'd done over the past three years. Not just the investigation but all the stupid shit I'd said about how androids should all be destroyed. And then they almost were. And I helped. I wasn't going to pretend I'd had a good reason or excuse. I shouldn't have done it. I should have never done a damn thing for the investigation. It turned out okay, but I had no way of knowing that it would. "What if we're on the wrong side?" I'd asked, but even then, I'd still helped buy him time. In the end, maybe I couldn't, or shouldn't, even bother with the past. I'd fucked up. I knew I'd fucked up. It had worked out sort of okay anyway, or, not okay, but for the best. It had worked out for the best, and I should just take that as a chance to put it behind me and try again. Do better this time. I held onto that idea. That the way things worked out, the way I ended up helping in some twisted sense, was my shot at turning it all around and doing a little better. Besides, what was I supposed to do? If I killed myself, 1) I'd just be avoiding my own guilt, which I should be serving up a life sentence for. 2) It wouldn't undo anything. 3) Connor would probably be sad about it. 4) There would be one less detective who actually gave a shit when it came to all this stuff. 5) Rose might be sort of bummed out, since she seemed to like me. Those were enough reasons for me to keep trying to turn things around the way everyone was nagging me to, instead of just killing myself and being done with it. Besides, with Connor around, I almost didn't mind existing so much these days. I might even stand a chance with Rose, even though that should have defied all logic. So what the hell. I'd see how this turned out. Let it play out for a while. Death wasn't going anywhere. It could wait, for now. And it'd be there eventually, no matter what, so it didn't really matter if I gave myself a few more years to run around doing stupid shit and hanging out with people who wanted me around. I'd see Cole again eventually, but not yet. For now, I'd assume that there was something to this whole redemption business. It didn't even sound that miserable, anymore. 


	48. Rupert

I wanted to talk to Ada that week but I was so busy and she was all booked up on the only free days I had so I just sort of stewed in my thoughts. I kept going around in circles. Connor kept asking what was wrong, and by about the fifth time I told him what was on my mind. The investigation. The things I'd done. Everything.

His LED was spinning red red red but he didn't say anything. 

"Connor?" 

"The things I did aren't your fault, Hank." He said eventually. 

"Well they sure as fuck aren't yours." I said. 

He looked sort of shocked at that. "What do you mean?"

"Look, it's like I said before, you didn't do anything wrong."

"I killed people." his voice was low. "Hank...I think maybe I'm still sort of...wrong."

"You were never a bad guy Connor." I told him. "Listen. People like me, people who made their own decisions and chose to be assholes, Connor, that's bad. You, you were a fucking victim, okay?" 

"Maybe." Said Connor. 

"What the hell do you mean maybe? You saved the fuckin' day. Remember?"

"Yes." He said, still looking upset. "Yes, I... suppose so." 

"Don't suppose anything. You did." I said. I wasn't sure how to actually convince him, though. "Look, I'm going to see Ada, right, and that's...you want me to do that?"

"Of course." He said. 

"Then...find your own fucking therapist. Whatever. Just...talk to someone who knows their ass from their elbow. Not me. A professional." I said. 

"I don't know if I should-"

"Look, you see a therapist, I see a therapist, or neither of us do." I said, knowing that was pretty manipulative of me, but too worried to care. The more I thought about it the more fucked up Connor's whole situation was. 

"I...alright." He said. 

"Good. I'm gonna hold you to that." I promised. 


	49. Of Detroit

The therapist we eventually settled on, wasn't technically licensed, but I didn't really trust a human to give a shit. Her name was Mercy, which I was judging, hard, but Connor liked her okay. I hoped it worked out alright, but I wasn't about to ask him to bare his soul twice in one day so instead I just said. "Go okay?" 

"Yes." Connor said. His LED was yellow, which made me question how honest exactly he was being, but I let it slide. Therapy could be stressful. I found it stressful anyway. I mean, sometimes I hated it. I didn't like spilling my guts to someone I didn't even know. I wasn't sure how Connor felt about it, but maybe the same. Hopefully this would do him some actual fucking good. 


	50. Building

"Hey, I picked up some shit at the store." I said, holding out the clothes. "See if any of it fits you." I tossed the clothes at Connor. 

"Hank, even if these do fit, legally, I am required-"

"Screw what's legal." I said. "Nobody gives a damn, and if they do we just tell them we're cops and they can screw off." 

Connor's little light thingy was going around in yellow circles. He froze for a second. 

"Okay." He said. "But not at work." 

"Whatever, boy-scout." I rolled my eyes. "You already steal my damn hoodie all the time anyway, so you can get off your high-horse about it." 

"Thank you, Hank." He said, and his voice was all soft and gentle like I'd done something really fucking great so I needed to get out of there as fast as possible. 

"Whatever." I waved him off. "Just see if they fit before you bust out the waterworks, okay?" 

He nodded and headed to the bathroom, presumably to change. 

He stepped out a few minutes later in a T-shirt, looking awkward. "What do you think?" 

"What is this a fashion show?" I scoffed. "You look fine. Come watch TV." 

 


	51. Hank Anderson's Home

Connor was dragging me to some art thing for Markus' shows and Rose was there to keep me from stabbing my ears out so I didn't have to hear a bunch of phoney assholes pretend to know shit they didn't know. I could smell it a mile away.These idiots knew how to pretend to care but why they bothered when they so clearly didn't give a damn was beyond me.

"It's beautiful." She said, looking at a painting of Markus' face. 

"I mean sure, he's a good looking guy." I said. 

Rose punched my arm playfully and laughed. "I'm serious." She said. 

"I mean I'm sure it's great and all but I don't know anything." 

"Okay. So just...none of these make you feel anything?"

"I mean sure but-"

"Okay. So what's your favorite?" She interrupted. 

"I like the one where he's screaming." I admitted. "It's a mood." 

"Heh" she said in an almost-laugh. "Dramatic." 

"So? What's your favorite?" I challenged her. 

"The hands." She said instantly. "With the blood colored paint."

"Yeah, okay, if I was more of an art snob it'd be pretty cool." I admitted. 

"It is cool!" She insisted. She was so beautiful when she was enthusiastic about something. Or arguing about silly things back and forth with me. I was glad I'd brought her here. 

"Remind me never to bring you to another one of these." I joked, instead of saying any of that sappy stuff. If I said any of that outloud I'd one: never live it down and two: actually have to admit to myself how attached I was getting to her, as if she wasn't terrifying enough when she was just a silly crush. Now I actually sort of knew her and I liked her and it was a good thing I was on Connor's stupid diet because every time I thought about that, I was on the verge of a fucking heart attack. 

* * *

 

 I told Rose about how I played Russian Roulette sometimes, when the night was winding down, and we'd found a corner. Connor was off somewhere, talking to Markus and being unusually social, which was probably good for him. So I decided that was probably as good a time as any to dump the fact that I was a suicidal mess onto my date. 

She took it surprisingly calmly. "How often?" She asked

"Used to be every few months." I admitted. "But I haven't done it in a while and it seems kinda stupid now." 

"It was." She said, just on the edge of sharply. 

"Yeah yeah. I'm aware. I just thought you should know."

"I'm glad you told me." She said. It was an uncomfortably heavy moment. 

"Yeah. I just figured you should know. Don't want you to waste any time without knowing what you signed up for." I sort of joked. 

She took it seriously, for some godforsaken reason. I mean it was just supposed to break the tension but instead she goes. "Being with you is never a waste." What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? I don't know. I'll tell you what I did say to that.

"Neither are you." 

Neither are fucking you. As if that was in question. I heard how stupid it sounded as soon as it was out of my mouth and in my attempt to fix it, I dug myself deeper, fast. 

"I mean...shit...I just...It's nice being around you. And...and I like the perfume you wear and that's not the point...I...I just like you a lot." I said stupidly. Jesus. What was I, a high-schooler?

"I'm glad to hear that." She said. "I like you a lot too." She kissed my cheek and yup, that was definitely a mini-heart-attack. I had a stupid moment where I almost considered asking her to be my girlfriend, but I wasn't actually in high-school and I didn't want to sound like a twelve year old so I didn't. I hoped she wasn't seeing anyone else. That was  a stupid, selfish hope. She was...well she was Rose. I couldn't think why she wouldn't be. There had to be better guys than me interested in  _Rose_ , right? I didn't ask that though. I just tried to calm the hell down a little and enjoy the moment. It was a pretty enjoyable moment. 

 


	52. Head Out Of The House With Connor

Connor had started taking forever in the bathroom to make sure he looked perfect every time we left the house. I knocked on the door and yelled. "Connor I know you can't be taking a shit in there? Are we going or what?" He opened the door 

"Sorry, just a second. I'm trying to fix my hair." He said. 

"Whatever." I said "Your hair looks fine." 

"Just a second, Hank." He insisted. 

"Fine." I sighed. I settled onto the couch to wait and scratched Sumo behind the ears. 

When Connor came out I realized- "Hey, your wearing the stupid uniform." 

"It's the law, Hank." He said, like this was somehow very serious.

"Who gives a fuck? We're not running errands like this." 

"They're  _my_ clothes." He argued. 

"And what you _want_ the stupid marker things?" I folded my arms. 

"Well...no." He admitted. "But I-"

"Great." I picked up a crumpled t-shirt off of the couch and shoved it at him. "Go change." 

"We should get going." 

"You spent forty minutes or hair-gel, son. You can take another two to get changed." 

Connor looked at me for a second and tossed the jacket. 

"I'm still not wearing a t-shirt." He said. 

"Snob." I said affectionately, ruffling his hair a little. 

"Hey!" He swatted my hand away. 

"It looks better this way anyway." I told him. 

He frowned at me skeptically but didn't head back to the bathroom to check so we finally got out of the house. Leave it to Connor to turn running errands into a damn fashion show. 


	53. Eden Club

Normally, I'd say that getting cryptic mystery texts asking to meet up at a cafe would be something that only happened in cheesy crime noir movies. Except the thing was, I'd gotten a mysterious text asking me to meet up at a cafe in the mall at 12:00 p.m. That was lunchtime anyway so I figured, what the hell, right? If someone wanted to lure me to my death, I just hoped they got it over with quick. Whatever. It was weird enough that I had to see where this was going. I didn't recognize the number. When I got to the cafe, an Asian woman with long white hair waved me over at a table. She was tense and there was a bright red light in her temple. She looked sort of...goth. I wondered if she was wearing makeup or if that was some sort of setting she had. Whatever. It wasn't important. 

"Are you Hank Anderson?" She asked. Her voice wavered a little. She sounded so human. 

"Uh...why?" I asked, sitting down across from her. 

"I...just...I need to know first." She picked at her hands. Her fingernails, or whatever they were, were painted black, I noticed, though the paint seemed to be chipping the more she picked at it. She kept glancing around like she was worried someone would overhear her. What was this, a case? I wasn't exactly a PI. Whatever she wanted, she should've just reported like normal. 

"Look, if you need to report a crime." 

"It wasn't a crime at the time." She said. "It doesn't...just..." Her LED spun. 

"Look, if you can't report a crime, I can't help you." I said. 

"Are you Hank Anderson?" Her voice was firmer.

Okay, I shouldn't answer that. This was weird and I...fuck I really wanted to see where this was going. It was just too fucking noir. 

"Maybe." I said. 

The woman across from me stared back, uncertain, wavering. 

At that moment a woman in the cafe uniform decided to come over to us and ask, in that peppy-customer service voice "Hello! Can I get either of you anything to drink?" 

I almost burst out laughing at that. Everything was so intense and then...that. "Shit." I said, startled. "Uh..." I swallowed a snort of laughter. "I...coffee." I said. The waitress raised an eyebrow at me. 

"Anything specific?" She asked. 

"Uh...shit never-mind. You have bagels." 

"Yup!" She said struggling to keep up the customer-service voice. "I'll get you a bagel. And you ma'am?" She turned to the android. 

"No...Nothing for me...thanks though." The android woman was still tense. The waitress trotted off to get the bagel. 

We waited in silence, knowing she'd be back. Whatever this lady wanted to say to me was obviously not something the waitress was supposed to hear. I had the urge to look down at my phone, but it seemed rude somehow, in this moment. There was something unsettling about this whole thing. It felt like a rock in my stomach. Whatever this was, it needed my full attention. I-

"Here you go!"  The waitress set down my bagel. 

I nodded and muttered awkward thanks. 

When she was gone, everything was still quiet for a minute. 

"What do you want?" I finally blurted out. 

"I...I just...I don't know. I'm just...trying to get some closure, I guess." The woman said. 

"Okay. Fuck. Fine." I snapped. "Whatever this is, I'm Hank Anderson, okay? Just tell me what's wrong." 

"I..." She fell silent then tried again. "I found a charge list." She said. "I mean...it wasn't supposed to be available but...after everything was so crazy...I just...I just wanted to know what I was forgetting. I'm not...I'm not here for revenge or anything." Her voice was getting shakier. What the hell was she talking about? "I just...need to know what happened." She looked around. It struck me suddenly that, for someone who didn't want to be overheard, she'd chosen a pretty busy place. 

"What...happened?" 

"I..." She hesitated then seemed to get bolder. "I found a report saying you...rented me...from the Eden Club. I just...I just want to know...shit I don't know. I just need to know what happened. I can't remember." 

She looked tenser than ever and it was at this horribly, catastrophically inappropriate moment, that I surprised myself with a roar of laughter. "Oh. Shit." I wiped my eyes, "I...shit, kid. Sorry. I'm not...I didn't mean to-"

It brought me down quick, how miserable she looked. I wondered if she'd confronted others and if this had been their immediate reaction too. That made me stop laughing quick. 

"I just. That's...nothing. Nothing happened. I'm a Detective. We were looking for a suspect who was hiding in the club and my partner, Connor"

She nodded. "I know you're Connor's partner." 

"Right." I said, not really used to being a D-list celebrity or whatever I qualified as at this point. "Well, Connor looked at your memory. That's all." 

"Are you lying?" I wasn't sure, but her eyes looked suspiciously shiny at this point, though she managed, just barely to keep her voice from breaking. 

"I swear." I said seriously. "Look, I'm sure there...I'm sure people have tried to bullshit you before about this, but the case is as good as closed anyway. If you want, I can show you the report." 

"Yeah?" She asked. "Let me guess, it's in the back of a van." She made a sound like she was trying to laugh but it got stuck in her throat. 

"No. Really. Look, I'll shit..I still don't know how to pull this shit up on my phone. Hang on." 

I texted Connor. I watched bubbles appear on the screen and then a series of pictures of my handwritten report from the files along with a side note from Connor reminding me that this was actually illegal and I shouldn't do it. Like he had no part in it.

I held out the phone. Instead of taking it, she just...peeled back the skin on her hand and held her palm to it. Whatever that did, it seemed to calm her down. 

"Okay." She said. "Okay." 

"You alright?" I asked. 

"I don't think I ever will be." She said. Which, right, stupid question. 

"Uh...yeah." I said. "Well...better then?"

"I...I don't know. Maybe." She said. "I think so. This went...a lot better than it usually does." 

"You need a better hobby." I told her. "Uh...I mean..." I trailed off, I wasn't sure what I meant except that this seemed like a really bad idea and could have turned out pretty bad if I had been whoever she thought I was. 

"I know." She said, smiling sadly. "Trust me, I know." 

"Right." I said. Whatever this was, it was her business. 

"Take care, ma'am." I said. I pulled out some cash and set it on the table to cover the bagel before I left. 

 


	54. Gavin

I was supposed to be working not texting Rose, but if I didn't get this off my chest I was gonna deck him. I could feel it. 

[Ugh. Gavin is speaking again.] I texted her.

[I'm sorry to hear that.] She responded. 

[The entire city is sorry to hear it.] 

 

[Oh man, I'm gonna hear a rant about this soon, aren't I?]

[If you don't shut me up.]

[I'll consider it. <3]

Nope. No. I was way, way too old and bitter to be feeling all stupid and gushy over a heart emoji. I didn't get fucking emotional over  _emojis_. Fuck that. I tried and failed to stop smiling down at my phone. 

"What're you looking at porno on the job?" Reed jabbed at me. 

"Fuck off." I said. 

"Heh. Interesting choice of words, pervert." He said. "Watch your back, Connor, old guys like this don't let you crash with them for free." 

Connor, thankfully, had the good sense to do nothing but raise an unimpressed eyebrow at Reed. 

I texted Rose back. 

[Is that an emoji, you sap?]

[Just send me a heart back, tough guy]

I hesitated for some reason before responding. 

[<3]

[You're lucky I like you.]

[I am an adult man who just texted a heart emoticon.]

[Never speak of this to anyone.]

[You're ridiculous.]

[It's part of my charm.]

[No. Your charm barely survives it. Even slightly less charm and it would be completely buried, cuddle-bear. <3 <3 <3]

[Cuddle-bear?! Excuse me???]

[Okay so what cheesy nickname DO I call you.]

[Hank.]

[Are you sure? I think Cuddle-bear is better.]

[Compromise: honey.]

[Fine, honey bear]

[THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT!!!] I added a laughing emoji and hit send. 

[*shrug*]

[You can't shrug in a text message] I told her. 

[And yet, I just did.]

[Wow. You really are a rebel.]

[Yes. This is definitely my most daring exploit yet. I think it deserves at least a chapter in the autobiography.]

[You joke, but I would read the shit out of that.]

[Nah. There are lots of good stories out there.] But there was a blushing emoji attached to that text. 

"Hank? Lieutenant?" Connor sounded slightly annoyed. I jerked up from where I was hunched over my phone. 

"Huh?" 

"We have a job to do, Lieutenant." 

"Pfft" I sighed but texted Rose a quick [Gtg, Con is nagging me :\\] before dropping my phone back onto my desk and pulling up whatever I was actually supposed to be busy with on my terminal. 

 

 

 


	55. Chris Miller

I tried not to let Gavin bug me for the rest of the day. It was only mildly less infuriating, knowing I'd be able to rant about him later to Connor, and maybe to Rose, but it was still something. Chris kept giving me this concerned look whenever Gavin spoke, like I was gonna lose my shit. 

"You alright?" He asked one time, while Gavin was out. 

"I'm _fine_." I said "What do ya keep looking at me like that for?"

"Sorry." said Chris and he turned back to his desk. 


	56. Killing Him

I wouldn't really have shot him, right? I was just...trying to get a reaction...right? Trying to provoke something. Give him a shove. Or...or maybe it was just my shitty way of trying to figure it all out for myself. Maybe it didn't matter. What happened happened. I'd apologized, or I was pretty sure I had, and I didn't really have the guts to bring it up. I knew I was a fucking monster, okay? I just wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to say. I had this sort of idea that I had never really addressed the whole thing properly but that I'd edged around it enough times that it'd be weird to bring it up. Like, it was probably just getting weird at this point. Or maybe that was just my shitty excuse? Whatever. I wasn't sure how to bring it up so I just went for it. 

It was after work and there was nothing good on TV anyway. Connor was making some veggie-based abomination that he was going to push at me. 

"Hey...I, I don't know if I've said this before but...I'm...that time at the park. That was really shitty of me. I shouldn't have done that. I'm," I avoided his eyes. "I'm sorry, okay? I dunno if I can make it up to you but, lemme know if there's anything I can do, okay?" 

"I'm...glad to hear that." Connor said. "I'd prefer if you didn't do that again?"

"What, pull a gun on you?" I scoffed. 

"Yes." He said, completely serious. Shit. 

"You're fucking with me." I said. 

He frowned. "I think that that's a more than reasonable expectation." He sounded indignant. 

"Yeah no _shit_." I said. "That's kinda the problem."

"What do you mean?" 

"I _mean_ , yeah no shit I'm not gonna go around pulling guns on you and shit. Look, I was drunk and stupid and..." Oh man I knew I shouldn't say this "I didn't know you were a person." Aaand I'd said it. "And maybe I was trying to figure that out but...I shouldn't have, I mean I should have figured it out some other way not...that." I said. Wow. Hall of fame apology right here. One for the history books. 'Hey, remember that time I threatened to kill you? oops.' Jesus. 

His LED was red, so he recognized how shitty it was too. "Neither did I." he said. 

It took me a second to even get what he was saying. "Uh. Yeah." I said. "So..." 

"It doesn't matter anymore." Connor said. "It's in the past. We've both done things we regret."

"Yeah. But the shit I did was...y'know. Me." 

"It's...behind us." said Connor. 

"Not gonna argue with that." I said, with a shrug. "Please tell me whatever you're making is for Sumo, not me." 

"At least try it." He said, immediately relaxing a little. 

"Fine,  _mom."_ I said. That had gone better than I thought it would. 


	57. Cyberlife Connor

I'd memorized that stupid number and I preferred when I could read it. Other androids, I gotta admit, it freaked me out when they didn't have their skin on, but with Connor, if I could see the actual writing on his cheek under the fake-skin stuff, I could check and see if it was Connor-Connor or Bullshit-Connor.  Even then, it could always be painted over, or faked. I had this weird paranoia that it'd already happened sometimes. Like I'd come home and for no reason at all I'd find myself thinking, would I  _know_ if this wasn't Connor? Would I be able to tell? Maybe it hadn't been him for ages and I just didn't realize. There was nothing I could really do about it, but part of me was relieved when I could tell myself that, given the bodies we'd found, the remaining RK800's all destroyed, it was less likely, at least. I guess technically, if I thought about it enough, I'd reach the whole brain-in-a-vat the-world-is-a-simulation Matrix bullshit and eventually I just had to accept that the people around me probably weren't evil-twins or spies or something. Probably. It was always in the back of my mind. At least when Connor wasn't doing something sort of ridiculous. Or when he smiled. He smiled now. It was weird. Or if he lectured me about something I didn't even think about. Shit like that calmed me down. It was him, if he was acting like a weird little nerd. 


	58. Today Will Be Fabulous

My "Today Will Be Fabulous" post-it note kept falling off of the mirror and I kept sticking it back on again. It was stupid but, even though I'd written it sarcastically, it'd sort of kept me going sometimes. I'd look in the mirror and wonder what the fuck I was doing and see "Today will be fabulous" and I'd be able to tell myself "probably not, but it's worth a shot" and get on with my life. It was a post it note that I wrote sarcastically, but it was the only advice I could make myself listen to. It's sort of hard to be intimidated by a post it note, at least in my personal experience. A person can be condescending. Fowler and his concern was condescending. The post it note was a post it note and it was in my own damn handwriting. That made it important, somehow. 


	59. Phone

I'd given up on getting my alarms to go off when they were supposed to. The same went for figuring out how to set my phone to vibrate. If I spent a few minutes I could usually get to my voicemails but I never bothered with it. Connor tried to show me a few times and after that I didn't bother complaining because he went on and on forever and never said anything I actually understood. 


	60. Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> excuse me while I shamelessly force my Brotp into this fic for no reason.

We were walking through the park. Just Rose and I. The two of us. It was nice. It would have seemed sort of cheesey normally, but Rose was the sort of person who could make that kind of thing seem completely natural. 

"Hey Rose..." I said. I didn't really want to ask this did I? 

"Yes?" 

"Are we...I mean...is this exclusive? Because...because it is for me...like...would you want me to be your boyfriend? Oh fuck no that makes it sound like I'm a highschooler. Fuck. You know what I mean."

Rose laughed. "You're my _boyfriend._ " she exaggerated the word and poked my arm. "I thought you knew." 

"I...I mean I _hoped_." I said. 

Rose snorted with laughter. 

"Hey!" I said in mock outrage "Look, I-"

"Aren't you s'posed to be a detective?" She asked. 

"Well...I was just...interviewing a uh..."I had no idea where I was going with this. 

She laughed again. "Just kiss me, Einstein." She said. 

* * *

 

I saw Connor's rebellion buddies sometimes but mostly I kept to my house and my job and my lunch spots and they kept to Jericho and their press conferences.

I met all of them at one point or another though.

I got the feeling that one, North, sort of hated me on principle, which I didn't care to argue with. She hated humans and frankly I could relate. She had a good sense of humor though and the few times she did come over she cracked me up. She liked to shit-talk people a lot and her reaction to any story involving Gavin was usually a hilariously accurate and foulmouthed description of what a piece of shit he was. 

I don't think we were really friends, but after a while, she did tell me I was "the second most tolerable human she'd met" which, by North standards, was a glowing compliment.  She also was good at helping me talk sense into Connor whenever he was being ridiculous.

Simon seemed constantly worried about something, which was probably reasonable but put me on edge. The guy just radiated anxiety to the point where it was impossible to be in the same room with him. Apparently North and Josh actually agreed on finding him "calming", and I guess that made sense since he was always trying to calm everyone himself included down, but personally, that just made me feel like we were constantly on the edge of some explosion that only he knew about. 

 

 

 

 

* * *

North and Connor were friends and she started coming over more to pick him up or watch TV. She was good at making fun of him too, and we made a decent team as far as that was concerned. I still don't know if we'd actually be considered friends, but whenever we were dragged to some sort of political bullshit, we ended up shooting glances at one another whenever someone said something stupid. 

* * *

 

North flopped down on the couch. 

"You will never believe what happened today." She said. 

"Lets hear it." 

"Markus called Leo his brother. _In front_ of Leo. It was great. Leo cried like a little bitch." 

"Oh man I can't believe I missed that." I said. I had never actually met Leo, but he'd become a regular topic for shit-talk and given what I'd heard about him, I could get behind that.

North looked at me for a second. "I've changed my mind. Carl got sappy about it. You get it. Congratulations tolerable-human number-one. You win by default."

I just scoffed. 

Connor sat down next to us. "What do you win by default?"

"Idiot of the year." North said. 

 

 

 


	61. Connor

"How'd the session go?" I asked. I don't know what I was expecting. I didn't get an answer. Just Connor's LED spinning red.  "Connor?" He didn't answer. "Connor!" I shook his shoulder. 

"Sorry." He said. "I just...I'm not sure what to say." 

"Just answer the damn question, Connor." I said. I probably should have told him he didn't have to talk, but to be honest, he was kind of freaking me out. 

"I...I haven't been telling her everything I should." 

"The hell does that mean?" 

He didn't answer. The light was still red. 

"Connor, what the fuck?" I said. "Fucking talk to me, kid." My voice was shakier than it was supposed to be. 

"I did something really bad, Hank." He said. 

"What does that even mean? You wanna give me more to go off of." 

He shut his mouth sharply, like even saying that much had been an accident. 

"Just fucking tell me!" I said. I shouldn't be yelling but I was really getting freaked out by now. 

"I pulled a gun. On Markus." 

"That wasn't-"

"Not the first time." He said. 

"What the hell does that mean?"

"After I...after the whole thing...when Markus was giving a speech. I..."

"What you had second thoughts?" I had no idea what to say to something like that. 

"No!" He said quickly. "No. Never. I didn't mean to. It was Amanda."

"Amanda? Who the fuck is Amanda?"

"When I was still...before I deviated, I would report to her. She was a program inside my mind. She was in this...mental zen garden."

"Okay..." I said. Weird. This was so fucking weird. It made me feel vaguely sick.

"She saw everything I did, and she...monitored me. Asked me questions. I-" his voice was shaking now. He sounded so...human. "I trusted her." 

"Yeah well...she sounds like a real bitch." I said because I couldn't think of anything better.

"She...when Markus was giving his speech" Connor's voice was still shaking, "She pulled me back into the garden. She said that Cyberlife had planned for me to deviate all along. That they were going to resume control. She...she _left_ me there." He said that last part like it was somehow the worst part of the whole thing, not being brainwashed or fucking...whatever you'd call this shit. 

"What the hell?" I asked intelligently. 

"I found the backdoor Kamski was talking about. The emergency exit but...I don't know if she's still there. I don't know...I feel like...sometimes I can feel her pulling at me...I don't." And then Connor was crying. 

I reached over and awkwardly patted him on the back. 

"Hey. It's over." I said. "You got out, right? If she was still in control, she'd have just pulled you right back in." 

He shuddered and I pulled him into a hug. It was weird. I hoped I wasn't making this worse, somehow. 

"It's gonna be okay, son. You got her." I said. I repeated the same general idea for a while. I don't remember exactly what I said, I just tried to calm him down. 

* * *

 

"I think you should tell her about this." I said, once Connor seemed to have calmed down a little. "I...I don't know what to say." I admitted. 

Connor's LED flickered red. "You're dissapointed." I said. 

"Fuck no. That's not what I fuckin' said I just don't know what to tell you. I...I can't even imagine what the hell that'd be like. Just...try talking to someone who might actually get it. You could even show her using that...skin...thingy. I don't know...it just seems like something you should tell a professional." I said. "That's all."

"Maybe." said Connor. I got the feeling that was as close as I was gonna get to an agreement, and it was Connor's life so I let it go. 

Connor sniffled. I didn't even know he could fucking do that. Sumo wandered over and put his head in Connor's lap. 

"I'm alright Sumo." He said, scratching Sumo's head. "Thanks. You're a good dog." 

* * *

 

 

I saw Connor and Sumo sitting outside together sometimes, on the porch. Connor would talk to Sumo. Chat with him in a running stream. I couldn't always hear what Connor was saying but I was glad he had someone he could talk to without worrying or overthinking. He had tried to get Sumo interested in games: tug-o'-war, fetch, that sort of thing, but Sumo, like me, was a lazy bastard who preferred naps and sitting around smelling bad to actually doing anything. He did like treats, which Connor was using to teach him to actually listen. The problem was, Connor was the only one who bothered with training him and giving him treats, so Connor was the only one Sumo actually listened to. My own dog didn't care what I had to say about anything. But Connor could tell him to sit or give him a handshake and Sumo was ready to play along. 

"Shake, sumo."

"He won't listen to you." I said, the first time I heard that.

I looked up and Sumo was lobbing a clumsy paw into Connor's hand. 

"I've been training him." Connor said proudly. 

"Huh. When I try he can't figure it out, but with you, he listens. Figures. Ingrate." I gave Sumo a fake-glare. He looked me right in the fucking eyes and wagged his big stupid tail, the bastard. 

Connor grinned. 

"Yeah yeah, just don't let it go to your head." I ruffled Connor's hair and he immediately straightened it out. 

* * *

 

We were coming back home from work one day, still flying high off of good news. Someone we'd arrested had actually, against all odds, gone to prison for once. That didn't happen as often as it really should. We investigated a lot of anti-android crime but a lot of it never even made it to trial. But this guy. This guy was going away for life and we were happy about it. We slumped down on the couch. 

"I'm going to get some rest." Connor said. 

"Hey, I-" But he was already asleep. Okay. That was alright. I should clean the room out first. I got started. 

* * *

We got home the next day, listening to music in the car. I was jamming the hell out to KBD, and Connor was holding perfectly, awkwardly still, but he had his eyes closed and his LED was yellow and he was leaning towards the speakers. We pulled into the driveway and I shut off the music. 

"We could stay and listen to the end of the song?" Connor suggested. 

"Nah, c'mon. I got a surprise for ya." I said. 

He looked at me. 

"Yeah, c'mon" I opened my door and got out. Connor followed behind and waited while I fumbled with the keys to the door. 

"So I was thinking. You should have your own room," I started. 

"That isn't necessary, Hank. I-"

"Shut up." I said. "So anyway. I cleaned out some of... Cole's... old stuff. I should've done it a while ago anyway I was just...I dunno didn't wanna deal with it." I didn't want anything to change. But it was changing anyway and I might as well make the most of it. "Anyway." I said, stepping into the house, "Room at the end of the hall is yours now." 

"Thank you." He said. "This means a lot to-"

"Yeah yeah" I didn't want to deal with this sappy shit. "Just actually take a look before you get all excited." 

He walked down the hall and I heard the door open, and shut. He didn't come out for few minutes. I knocked. 

"...Come in?" came Connor's voice from the other side. 

"Uh, so? What's the verdict?" I asked, looking around at the walls. 

"It's perfect." Said Connor. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to take a nap in my new room." 

"Asshole." I said affectionately, and left. 

* * *

 

"You should have let me handle it." I insisted, taking some of the pain medication.

"I'm fine." Connor insisted.

"You're missing a hand."

"I'll get a new one." 

"get a new one" I grumbled "Yeah sure. Why not. Just lose your fucking arm whenever. This is so fucked up." 

"It was only a hand, and would you rather I _didn't_ get a new one?" Connor argued.

"I'd rather you didn't fucking have to." I snapped. 

"You're injured too." Connor pointed out. 

"Yeah. Shit...I guess I am. Crazy motherfucker." I said, referencing the guy who had decided the best option, when confronted with suspicious police, was to fucking attack them. Yeah. That'd help. He was also beat up pretty bad, but they said he'd make it too, which I wasn't sure I was exactly happy about at this point. Okay, I guess I was glad we hadn't actually killed anybody, but they'd better keep him the fuck away from us. I'd probably have to tell Rose too, and now she was gonna be all worried and upset which...I mean not that I wanted to worry her but it was nice to see that she cared.

"Hank are you alright?" She said, right on cue. "I came as soon as I could!" She ran her hands over me, like she was trying to figure out exactly how beat up I was. Adam followed behind, actually looking sort of concerned. 

"I'm fine. This idiot is the one who lost a fucking hand." I jabbed my thumb at Connor. 

"I'm fine." Said Connor.

"You're idiots." said Tina. 

I flipped her off and she just laughed. 

Rose turned to Connor "Is that a bullet wound?" She asked incredulously. 

"It's really fine." Connor insisted. "Nothing some minor repairs won't fix." 

"I feel like we're the idiots from a horror movie." I sighed. "Nothing good ever happens in a fucking flooded basement." 

The receptionist, an AX400, who was bringing Connor more blue-blood snorted at this. "Knowing you're stupid doesn't make you any less stupid." She said. "Next time wait for fucking backup." 

"Thank you, Joy." Connor said, like she hadn't just insulted us. 

"Next time wait for fucking backup" I muttered under my breath in a mocking voice.

"What was that, Lieutenant?" asked Joy. 

"Nothing." I said, feeling like a little kid who was in goddamn time out. 

 

 


	62. Markus

For Connor's birthday, he made a cake he couldn't eat. Don't ask me what that was about because I haven't got a fucking clue. It was...not good. At all. But it was cake and Connor was staring at me all hopeful, so I ate it anyway. He had his Jericho buddies over to the house, including Markus. I'd never get used to seeing the friggin android messiah or whatever just casually hanging out at my kitchen table, petting my dog and struggling to find something nice to say about my house. It wasn't too long ago I'd seen pictures of this guy singing down the barrel of a gun like an absolute lunatic on TV. The same actually went for...most of Connor's friends. That whole little team. North, I'd gotten sort of used to, but I didn't see Markus too often. I mean North talked about him a lot, but somehow my brain couldn't quite make the connection between "Markus, my buddy's boyfriend" and "Markus, the leader of a political movement and arguably an entire species." The two just didn't jam together in my mind. So yeah, there was something off about seeing him in my living room. Like he'd been photoshopped there. 

"Uh Hey." I said. I was always awkward. 

"Hello, Lieutenant." Markus nodded at me. He was fucking hypnotic, even when he was just hanging out with his friends. He had this aura around him that made everything he said sound important, and like it was just for you. 

"Hank." I corrected him. "It's Hank. How's the clubhouse."

"Jericho is doing well. It's a lot of work but I'm confident that negotiations will turn out alright." 

Of course he was. What was he supposed to say 'sorry everyone. We're screwed, actually'. Nah. Guy like Markus, everything had to have some positive spin to keep people hanging on. I knew that. Politicians could never be straightforward. 

"Sure y'are." I said. "I'm not a reporter, Markus, relax." 

Markus smiled at me, in a way that made me think he was laughing at at least one of us, but I wasn't sure which. I never knew what to talk about with him, but he was around all day so I'd do what I could. 

* * *

 

"You paint anything lately?" I came up with. 

Markus frowned and rested his head in his hands for a moment. "I try to find time." He said. "But there's so much work to do." 

For a second he looked like a real person. Not in a douchey anti-android way more like...he was always a character almost y'know? The brave leader, rallying his people. Not a  _guy_ , with actual doubts and insecurities and thoughts and feelings. But just for a second it slipped and I don't even think he meant for it to happen. I felt bad about asking. I wasn't sure what to do, except pretend I hadn't seen it.  

* * *

 

There was an attack on Jericho later that month, and Markus almost fucking died. He tried to downplay it, but he also had to fill out the report and he admitted that he'd lost a fucking arm when the bomb went off. Three people died. One of them, a human who'd been volunteering at Jericho, was officially a martyr on the news by the time I got home from work. Markus was smeared with her blood where he'd tried to shield her. He kept looking down at his hands. They were shaking, just slightly. I should have been surprised this didn't happen sooner, really, but some small childlike part of me was just scared to see Markus so shaken. It was like seeing your parents crying and knowing that something was really wrong. Markus was supposed to have all the answers, and he was fucking _scared_. It occured to me then that I didn't know who died. Shit. Simon and North and Josh. They were always around him. What if...North? It felt like I was falling, just thinking it. "Who else?" I asked. I didn't ask Markus. I couldn't. I asked Connor. Markus had shared the memory with him. Connor looked at me for a second. 

"No one you know." He said. Then after a second. "They were nice to me." 

I hated how relieved I felt. People were dead. But no one I knew. 

 

* * *

 

North didn't talk about it much, but she was shaken.  "I... She searched for words. "He...I can't lose him. _Our people_ can't lose him." 

"You won't." I said, even though I couldn't promise that. "We're gonna find whoever did this." 

She nodded. 

* * *

 

 

 

 

We caught the guys pretty quickly, thank god. They were hanging around the place and one of them was banged up pretty good from the explosion. I didn't feel very bad for the guy. His friend was getting all weepy and asked me if I thought he'd be okay. 

"Not my problem." I said, banging the guys head on the doorway as I shoved him into a cop-car. 

 


	63. Alice

Rose was going to her brother's place in Canada for Christmas, and I and Connor were invited. Don't ask my why, but apparently she actually wanted me around for the holiday. It was one thing to spend my birthday with me, but then there was this, inviting me out of the fucking country, technically. Connor, for once, didn't seem to care that this was technically a crime, and was alright with taking advantage of the somewhat relaxed state that the border guard had fallen into. 

* * *

 

The drive took forever and my legs were sore from sitting for so long. There was a guy basically towering over me in the doorway and a small girl standing next to him. "Hey you must be James." I said. "I'm Hank." 

"Luther." The man responded. "And James is just inside." 

"Luther," The girl tugged on his shirt, seeming urgent. He picked her up. "What is it?" 

She whispered something into his ear. 

Connor stood behind me. 

Luther looked uncomfortable for a second and stepped back from the doorway. 

"Just a second." He said. "I'll get James." He shut the door. 

"What was that about?"

"Maybe they are intimidated by my past." Suggested Connor. 

"Assholes." I said. Connor gave him self enough shit for that without anybody else's help. It's not like it was his fault anyway. There was a sound of hushed, serious voices cutting off a conversation as they came back within earshot and the door opened. Rose's brother wasn't nearly as tall as Luther and he looked a lot more like her, right down to the spatter of freckles over his face. 

"Hank!" He said, pulling me into a hug out of fucking nowhere. "I've heard a lot about you! I'm James! And you must be Connor!" He turned to Connor and gave him the same awkward hug. Connor shot me a sympathetic look. 

"Uh, yeah. You're James?" I asked. 

"In the flesh." He said. The kid was still staring up at me with those big eyes. I waved at her, trying to dissolve the tension and she hid behind her dad's leg. So much for that.

* * *

 

I was in the kitchen and I heard the little girl talking to Rose from there. 

"Rose, those men. They're the one's who chased me and Kara. We had to walk past them in the hotel and Kara said we had to be really quiet or they'd hurt us." Her voice was urgent. Oh. That was her. The girl. The YK500. I'd always found the whole idea of "child" androids sort of creepy, but that wasn't her fault. And apparently she was more scared of me. Shit. 

Rose was saying something to her, probably promising that I was no longer a genocidal maniac. Kara must have been the AX400 but...what happened to her? Maybe I didn't want that answered. 

* * *

 

The girl avoided me, which was fair, but made me feel like absolute shit. I kept to myself too. No reason to freak her out worse trying to lob an apology at her. Turns out she ended up talking to  _me,_ after a few days. 

"Rose says your sorry." She stared at me, glancing back towards the other room, where Rose and Luther and James were. "Is that true?" 

"Yes." I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Yes, I'm very sorry." 

She stared at me, looking me up and down. "Okay." She said. It wasn't necessarily forgiveness, but I'd take what I could get. 

* * *

 

Luther didn't really get over his suspicion of me. That was fine. Smart of him, even. I wouldn't like me either. If someone went around chasing Cole like that, I'd fucking kill them. Not a comforting thought, exactly, considering that Luther was about twice the size of me, or so, but at least if he killed me I'd sort of deserve it. 

* * *

 

"Rose?" I asked. We were lying in bed, and her head was resting against my chest and it made me feel safe enough to ask questions I probably shouldn't. "What happened to that kid's mom." 

"She died." Said Rose. "Helping Luther and Alice escape the camps. She held off the guards while they escaped." 

"Oh." I swallowed but there was still something heavy in my throat. At least I wasn't the one who killed her. It was a pointless thought. She was dead either way. But at least it wasn't me. It shouldn't have mattered, but I was a self-absorbed asshole, so of course it did. I wished I could unhear the words, but they kept playing over and over in my head the next morning, watching Adam, Luther, Alice and Connor get in a snowball fight. They'd forgiven Connor. I was going to head back inside when Alice called out to me. 

"Hank! Play with us!"

Luther didn't look as certain. 

"I don't know if that's a good idea." I said. 

Luther still looked nervous but he seemed to sense that I needed his permission and for some reason he lobbed a snowball at me. "Afraid, Hank?" He said. The snowball crumbled against my coat. 

I grinned. Alright. "You wish." I said. 

Connor had the good sense not to completely pummel Alice, at least, the rest of us were toast. Especially Adam and I. I did my best to dodge, but I couldn't even make one snowball in the time it took Connor to make two and he knew it. The cold stung against my face and I ended up falling back, laughing in the snow. 

* * *

 

Alice went to bed after that and Luther picked her up to take her to her room. "Wait." He stopped. 

"Connor." She asked. "Can you read the story tonight?" 

I couldn't believe I'd ever thought Alice was creepy. She was a damn angel. 

Connor's LED went yellow in surprise. "Alright." he said, following Luther down the hallway.

* * *

 

Connor and Alice were sort of buddies now, I guess. She asked him a million questions, just like a real kid. I guess she  _was_ a real kid, just not a human one. 

"We have a dog." Said Connor, holding out his hand to display a picture. "His name is Sumo." 

"Is he mean?" Asked Alice "Or nice?" She was holding this little fox toy against her chest, like she was protecting herself from the answer.

"He's very nice." promised Connor.

"Too nice." I said. "He can't guard worth a damn." 

"Language." said Rose.

I rolled my eyes. "It's a good thing you're perfect, Rose." 

* * *

Christmas came around and Alice basically dragged Luther to the tree and the pile of presents around it. 

"Look, Luther! Presents!" 

We settled around the tree and started ripping haphazardly into the boxes with our names on them. 

Rose had gotten me a set of records. Nice ones. I felt sort of bad about the gardening kit I'd gotten her. I could've done better. Jewelry maybe. Women liked jewelry right? 

Alice was surrounded by a small pile of her own gifts: a small plush giraffe that I had seen Rose putting into a bag last night, a pile of books from the same series judging by their matching covers, and a picture book. I and Connor had gotten her some last minute toys too, though those were pretty generic. A teddy bear and some puzzles. She set the bear and giraffe in a small circle with the fox, so they could chit chat or something. Score one for me. I told Connor that Teddy Bears were better than puzzles. 

* * *

 

Rose opened her present and I almost wanted to vomit. She smiled. "Thank you, Hank. These are just what I needed." She kissed my cheek, suddenly. My heart thudded with relief, and embarrasment. It wasn't exactly gratuitous PDA but, from Rose, with everybody circled around for Christmas morning and there to see, it felt like a lot. It was this...public acknowledgment that she liked me. I dunno. It sounds stupid when I put it like that, but it was just nice at the time. 

"Hank, there was no name under the 'from' catagory. Are these from you?" Connor held up his headphones. 

"Yeah. I mean I don't even know if you used them but you can always return them. Receipts in the bag." I pointed. 

"I like them." Said Connor, with that big goofy smile. His face fell. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't even think to-"

"Relax, kid." I said. "I don't need more shit. My house is messy enough as it is." 

Adam opened his own gifts. He turned to his mom. "Wait for real?!" He said. 

"It's been a tough year." She said. "I figured you deserved a treat." 

"What'd you get?" I asked. 

He was too happy to even sort of glare at me. "Concert tickets! For Scant Jackson!"

"You're welcome." said Rose.

He wasn't exactly as thrilled about the T-shirts I'd gotten but he also didn't glare at me and even said "cool" quietly when looking at one, so I took that as a win.

 

 


	64. Amanda

We were on the road, back to home. We'd dropped off Adam and Rose and we were almost to the house. I didn't even notice anything was wrong at first. I was focused on driving. "Almost there." I said. Connor was silent. 

"It's gonna be good to see Sumo again." I continued. "I bet Ben's been letting him get fat. Well, fatt _er_ anyway. You're gonna have to start all over on that diet with him. Mark my fuckin' words. " 

Connor didn't answer. 

"Hey, Con, you wanna turn some music on or something?" Nothing. 

"Connor? Connor?" I pulled the car over to the side of the road. Connor's LED was circling RED RED RED. 

"Connor!" I jostled him. He startled. Like he had just noticed I was there. 

"It was Amanda." He said. "I can feel her. She's getting stronger." 

"Fuck. The crazy lady in your brain." Connor didn't even crack a smile at that. 

"More or less." He said. He wrapped his arms around himself, and shivered, like he was cold. 

"Okay, shit. We're almost home. Just hang on until then." I said. 

Connor nodded silently. His LED was still a solid, unmoving red. His coin was stuttering across his hand, slower, and more awkwardly, than usual.

* * *

 

When we got inside, Connor sat on the couch, staring straight ahead into nothing. Who the fuck was I supposed to call about this. Even now that they were supposed to be all "reformed" I didn't trust Cyberlife for shit, especially not when it came to Connor. 

"She's gone for now." He said eventually. "But she'll be back. I'm scared." He said. He sounded fucking scared too. 

"We'll figure something out." I said. I didn't feel particularly confident, though. 

* * *

 

"She hates me." He said the next day, so quiet I almost missed it. 

"Fuck her bullshit." I said. 

It didn't seem to make him feel much better, though. 

* * *

 

"It helps when you talk." He said, out of nowhere. 

"Huh?"

"It helps when you talk. It makes it easier to fight her."

"Uh...okay what...what should I say?"

"I mean...It's not..." he sighed and ran the quarter across his hand. "It's just that it helps to hear your perspective. Sometimes I can hear her it...it's just good to get a second opinion."

"Shit." I said. "What's she say." 

"What I'm thinking, mostly." Connor said. There was a bitterness to his smile. It was almost familiar.

* * *

 

"I think I've figured out how to delete her." He said. He sounded lighter. I hoped he was right. "She should be gone by the end of the week." 

* * *

 

I checked in every day or so, to see how it was going. She was almost gone when he stopped being happy about it. 

"She's scared." He said. "I can feel it. She's begging me not to kill her...I don't know what to do." He looked at me, like  _I_ was somehow supposed to have an answer to that. 

"It's your call, son." I said, patting him on the back. "Sorry. I can't make this decision for you." 

* * *

 

He woke me up at three fucking a.m. 

"She's gone." He said. He sounded miserable. "She...she didn't give me a choice. She tried to take over again...Maybe if I hadn't..."

"You did what you had to." I interrupted him. "Sometimes it's shitty. I've killed people on the job." I said. "Sometimes there's no other way." 

"I _hate_ this." Connor said, his voice had surprising force, as quiet as it was.

"I know." I said, though I was pretty sure I had no fucking idea. 


	65. Hank Anderson

We'd reached the point where Connor didn't comment on finding me dancing around in a t-shirt and boxers, listening to KBD so loud he could probably hear it from my headphones. I had also reached the point where I had enough energy to do that in the first place. We had  _not_ , however, reached the point where I could comfortably do this, eyes closed, bump into somebody, say "SORRY CONNOR" over the sound of music only I could hear, and look up to realize I'd bumped into Markus. 

My headphones slumped down around my neck in shame. "Oh. Uh. Markus. I didn't realize you were here." I was suddenly very aware of the mustard stain on the T-shirt. I mean. I mostly didn't care about celebrities or anything but still. Mustard stain. Not my best moment. 

"No harm done." said Markus, even though I could see he was obviously resisting the urge to laugh at me. 

North, who was apparently also here, broke the tension by  _actually_ laughing at me instead of dodging around it, god bless her. "You look so fucking stupid." She said through wheezes. 

I flipped her off companionably, trying to regain some of my dignity. "Connor, why the fuck didn't you tell me your friends were coming over?"

"I did. Both yesterday and a few hours in advance. You said it would be alright."

"Oh shit! That was today?" 

"Yes. That was today." He said, the smug motherfucker. 

* * *

"C'mon" I pleaded with the doctor. "My eyesight is _fine_. Don't do this to me." 

"Just for reading, Mr. Anderson." Said the doctor. 

"Go to hell. This appointment is over." I didn't get the glasses. I'd just get large print. Or squint. Or something. 

* * *

Normally, after any sort of doctor appointment, it was tradition to go and get blackout drunk, but Connor was so optimistic today and he had that stupid goofy smile on and Rose would be dissapointed and I could already feel Ada staring at me so instead I just went and got comfort food that Connor didn't want me to get. It wasn't even sort of the same but it was better than being healthy. 

* * *

 

For some reason Connor couldn't seem to wrap his mind around what a joke was. 

"No I don't...I mean I don't think I actually do." I said. "It's just something I say, okay? It's okay. Calm down."

"Why would you say something like that?" Connor asked again. 

"Because I was mildly inconvenienced and it was the first thing that popped into my head." I said, still staring down at my fallen soda. 

"Hank, suicidal-"

"I'm not suicidal!" I said, immediately questioning if that was technically true. Regardless, that wasn't what I had meant. "It was a fucking joke, okay? Calm down." 

"Oh." said Connor, with that face that made me immediately realize I'd been a complete dick. "Sorry." 

"Shit, Connor I didn't...you don't have to be sorry you just don't gotta be so worried all the time. I'm fine, okay?" 

Connor looked skeptical. "Alright." He said. I didn't actually believe him and I don't think he believed me. 

 

 


	66. Josh

"Are you even listening to me?" Josh asked three fourths of the way through whatever he was ranting about. Something about the history of tea and why the way I was making mine was actually bullshit, albeit in more delicately polite phrasing.   
"Not really." I admitted. "And I don't really understand most of what I did pay attention to."  
Josh just sighed. He was always pissed off about something, for such a peaceful guy. I could relate to that, except that I wasn't really peaceful at all. He seemed like a decent man, we just didn't really click. I was glad Connor had friends though, even annoying preachy friends. He also had this habit of clicking and unclicking this old pen that somehow managed to be more obnoxious than Connor's stupid coin. He felt like the sort of guy who'd sit next to you on an airplane and drive you unintentionally insane without even realizing it, and then made you feel bad for being annoyed with him when he tried to start a conversation and was really well meaning. I'd see him do something really nice, like he'd be taking care of some little kid who looked exactly like Alice for the day and he'd tell her some old myth about the moon to help her fall asleep, and I'd feel like an ass for not wanting to be buddies. It was like every time he said something the whole title of HERO just got thrown in my face and I remembered what a piece of shit I was. Not really his fault but it made him sort of difficult to hang out with. I admired him, but after talking for a little, I could imagine why he and North were always on eachothers nerves. He was like her opposite. The anti-North. South. It was a bad joke but I snorted at it to myself. 

 

 


	67. Luther

The next time I saw Luther, it was for thanksgiving next year. He and Alice didn't eat, so I didn't see much of him. He didn't avoid me so much, but he didn't exactly go out of his way to talk to me either. Mostly he ignored me, with the occasional, unreadable glance. 


	68. North

We got a call about some vandalism. Somebody had tagged "I think therefore I am" over a bunch of old cyber-life stores (again). I didn't really give a shit but I responded to the call because it was better than seeing yet another murder. When we got there, North was still adding slogans to the walls. I didn't bother to arrest her, just pulled up and waved. "Morning, North." 

"If you arrest me, I'm gonna be pissed." She said. 

"Nah, just checkin' in. Looks like we missed you by a few minutes." 

North grinned. "This is why you're alright."  She leaned to see Connor in the passenger seat "Hey, Connor!" She said, and continued graffitying the wall. 

"Hello North. I'm glad to see you're not completely destroying anything." said Connor. I couldn't help laughing at that. 

I waved to her and continued driving. 

* * *

I actually ended up seeing her not too long after that, about a week later when Gavin brought her in. I wasn't even sure it was her, except that Connor could always tell and he recognized her right away. 

He went to talk to her and I followed. "North?" He asked. "You got arrested?" 

"Crazy bitch tried to kill me." 

"No. I tried to mildly injure you." said North. "There's a difference." 

"Whatever." Gavin said. "Just get in the holding cell until your boyfriend comes to bail you out." 

North looked like she was about to headbutt him so I stepped between the two. "I'll take this from here, Gavin." I said. 

"Screw off, Anderson." 

"I don't need your help." North snapped at me. 

"I don't need the migraine that is you and Reed interacting."  

"Yeah well...neither do I." North admitted.

Reed shoved her into the holding cell and walked away.

"If you're gonna pick a fight, avoid picking it with a cop." I said. 

"I'm not the one who picked the fight."  

"Yeah." I said. "That does sound like Gavin. Just look out for yourself. Bastards like him are looking for any reason to gun you down." 

"You don't say." said North sarcastically. 

"Yeah yeah, just be careful." I said. "Why is everyone I know so goddamn reckless?" 

"I said I was sorry about yesterday!" Connor interjected. He'd pulled another stupid stunt chasing a perp. 

"Great. I'll tell my doctor never-mind. I don't need heart medication. You're sorry." 

"Ha." said North, although I wasn't exactly sure who's side she was on. 

* * *

 

North did not get less reckless. Mostly, she just refused to acknowledge it was even recklessness in the first place. She was worse than Connor. 

* * *

 

I should never have suggested Mario Kart. Never. I would regret this for the rest of my life. 

She was cackling like a cartoon super-villain. 

"HOW THE HELL DO YOU HIT ME EVERY TIME" I yelled, trying to recover the momentum I had lost when the turtle-shell crashed into me. 

"You run right into them!" 

I had created a monster. 

* * *

 

"This is why we're friends."  

"So you can get away with breaking the law?"

"Exactly."

"Wow, thanks, I feel really appreciated." 

 

 

 


	69. Simon

I didn't use social media too much anymore but I still had a few accounts and I was pretty sure my followers or buddies or whatever were getting fed up with me. I got a lot of new ones, but most people who'd been following me before left a few angry messages about how I'd gotten suckered in and left. I used to run with some real assholes, I'd discovered. The kind of people who I'd thought were smart enough to see through bullshit but turned out to be too stupid to use their brains. It was oddly familiar, in a way that I carefully didn't think about, despite the fact that there had never been an android rights movement for me to post endlessly about before. Connor's TV appearances. Jericho answering questions as a panel. Debates and legal shit. Maybe because I'd always been on the other side of things, but I'd been weirdly fixated on androids for a while now. Yeah. That was it. We'd go with that. Ha. 

* * *

 

Even if Simon was sort of weird, I was pretty glad he was friends with Connor, and North for that matter. Maybe this was the explanation for why everyone I knew was so fucking reckless. I found people with a sense of basic self-preservation off-putting or something. Regardless, whenever I overheard Connor or North suggesting something...how to put this nicely...fucking idiotic, if Simon was there, he could be counted on to tell them maybe it wasn't such a good idea. After about the fourth or fifth time I patted him on the back in sympathy.

"Give it up buddy. I've tried. They're just like this." 

Simon sighed with genuine hopelessness. "Yeah." It wasn't even a joke.

North laughed. 

"Hush you." I said. "If you listened to Simon more, maybe you wouldn't always be almost-dying." 

"Whatever." She said. "If I listened to Simon more nothing would ever get done." 

"I'm just trying to keep us alive." Simon sounded like he was actually taking that personally.

"Thank you, Simon." said Connor, with that same embarrassing sincerity.

"Don't thank him just take the fucking advice." I said. 

"I won't be doing that." said Connor, like he was telling me about the weather outside or something. 

I grumbled something rude in response. Simon was silent but he looked like he echoed the sentiment. Yeah. Even the weird little nerd was growing on me, just a little. 

I needed a drink. Except Connor had ruined that charming aspect of my personality as well. So instead I just turned the TV up and tried to fall asleep over the sound of Connor and his buddies bickering. 

 

* * *

 

Nope. Nevermind. Simon was terrible and so was Connor. 

"There is no way in hell this is a recipe."

"Simon gave it to me, it-"

"No." I said. "This is where I draw the line. I'll eat your rabbit food, but this abomination is not allowed to pretend to be cake." 


	70. Captain Allen

Connor got a call. Not me. They sent Connor in, not me. I wasn't even allowed across the door. Some guy, who was just described as a "GJ500", whatever the fuck that meant, had taken his girlfriend, Raven Keres, god what a stupid name, hostage. I tried to push past the door to the apartment building but some asshole in a SWAT uniform stopped me. I pulled out my badge and waved it at him. 

"Why are you so stubborn? This isn't your crime-scene." 

"Look just let me in there!" I roared "I won't-" 

"Don't do this here. Whatever your problem is, you need to take it somewhere else." The man sighed. "I have bigger problems to deal with." He turned to one of his other guys and nodded at me. "Akin, keep this guy in check." 

'Akin' took the douchebag's place blocking the door. 

"Fuck off, Akin." I said. Akin didn't move.

I pulled out my phone and waited for news updates that would mean shit and probably be twenty minutes late. Fuck this. I kept loading and reloading the page.  Fowler called in to tell me I needed to come back to the office, which wasn't happening. I was just as useless here as I was there, and he pointed it out, but I couldn't leave. Instead, I stood there, occasionally making awkward eye contact with Akin. 

* * *

 

The updates were garbage, and I got more from just trying to listen in over the sound of sirens and yelling and shit. The guy who had blocked my way was the loudest and he seemed to be in charge. Figured. He seemed like a douche. Guys like that always ended up in charge of shit for some reason. 

* * *

 

Gunshots went off. I felt sick. Disconnected. Nothing was real. Things should be real. Why was I handling this so shitty? I should be used to fucked up situations by now. Fuck. I tried to look past the guy blocking my way but I couldn't see much. 

The guy from before was back, looking angry and frustrated and...there weren't specific enough words for it. Just, as soon as I saw the guy, I knew everything had gone to shit. 

"Where the fuck is Connor?" I asked. 

"Your bot fucked up." The guy pushed past me angrily. I followed the uniforms until I reached the right room. It took me a while to figure out where exactly Connor was. When I found him, he was standing over a body and his light was circling red red red. 

"Oh thank god." I put my hand on his shoulder. "I thought you were fucking dead." 

No response. 

I shook him a little. "Connor." 

He finally seemed to notice me. 

"I failed." He said. "I tried to stop him and I failed." 

I didn't know what to say to that. 

"Uh...yeah. Sometimes...shit, sometimes that happens. Let's get the fuck out of here."

"I thought..." He trailed off. 

"C'mon. Lets go." I tugged at him again, trying not to look at the body. He didn't move. 

"Connor!" I tried to snap him out of it. It only half worked. He turned, just a little and looked at me. It was at this point that I saw his other shoulder. Or...where it should have been. 

"What the fuck!" 

"What?" He asked blankly, like he hadn't noticed the jagged fucking  _hole_ in his shoulder. 

"What do you mean what? Asshole! Half your shoulder is missing!" 

"Oh. Yes." He said, looking at it like he had forgotten about it. 

"Yeah that." I forced myself not to completely spin out at this point. 

* * *

The police station had the shit for repairs, or it was supposed to, but apparently most of the shit there was gone, so I had to do everything myself. I called up Rose, but all she had was some basic shit. Not enough to replace his fucking shoulder or whatever the fuck needed to happen, so instead I took Connor to the church where his revolutionary buddies had set up shop and yelled until somebody came around to help. It was all kind of a blur. Somebody tried to make me wait outside because of some policy, but I got past them and found Connor. It didn't take to long to get him fixed up but it was still nauseating and I tried not to look to closely at what they were doing. It was probably hypocritical or, or something, but I really really wished that it didn't have to be androids operating on him. Fucked up, right? But I wanted a trained technician or something. Not some fumbling revolutionaries. This was Connor. He needed the best, and for whatever reason (yeah, whatever reason, like I didn't know) my brain had decided that now was the time for blind irrational anger, and demands for a human technician. I don't really remember much of that, but I'm gonna throw out a wild guess and say that that didn't win me any buddies at Jericho that day. I'm just glad North wasn't there to see it. I'm such a prick. But they fixed Connor up anyway, so I didn't really care how I'd acted, just that we got home and that Connor was in one piece. 

 

 

 


	71. Zlatko Andronikov

Connor was looking through old case files when he caught it. It was a small detail from the case with the freak dead guy. The Russian one with all the experiments. It took me a minute to even remember it, when Connor said it was one of my old cases because, well, I'd sort of repressed that particular memory. It was a small note in the so-called victim's journal, talking about some sort of idea he'd gotten for a "mod" which seemed to be slang for mutilation, off of an internet message board. 

Fowler thought it was unlikely that they were still operating. I disagreed. 

"They weren't exactly supposed to have half these androids in the first place. There's no reason they'd go along with the orders." 

"Maybe." Fowler said. "Fine. Investigate it. Just don't let it take priority over your other cases." 

I stepped out of his office and sat back down at my desk. Connor took his seat across from me. I rubbed my face, trying to wake up. "Where the fuck do we even start with this?" 

"We should make several fake profiles, work to arrange  meetups, and conduct as many arrests as possible before the community catches on." Connor suggested. It sounded straightforward enough. 

"Ugh. Why does every case I get have to be so _techy_?" 

"You work in android crimes." Connor pointed out. 

"Yeah but that's not-you know what, screw it. Lets catfish some freaks." 

* * *

 

Connor ran most of the actual accounts, occasionally asking for my advice on "character details" which seemed to mostly revolve around sounding more like a human and less like an android. It was sort of weird to get questions like "How would a human phrase this, do you think?" How the fuck was I supposed to answer that? I wasn't exactly a master of language. Half of my vocabulary was just variations on the word 'fuck'. Whatever. It wasn't like these guys were philosophers. They were just creeps who thought they were smart because they knew a few different ways to fuck someone's face up. Okay, more than a few. From what mercifully little I saw of the actual accounts, things were...creepy as hell. Eyes removed from sockets. Huge blue gashes. Fingers replaced with needles and shards of glass. Worst things that I tried not to think about. 

* * *

 

The first sting we kept small. A relatively unknown account. Some newby trading in trafficked androids modified to look like they were aliens from sci-fi flicks. We met up at a warehouse under the pretense of being customers, which made me feel gross just thinking about. We had set up a meeting under the pretense of buying a person. Humanity never failed to disgust me. I didn't exactly need a wire, since Connor pretty much  _was_ his own wire, so the whole thing was pretty quick. Just get her to talk about the deal a bit and then slapped some cuffs on her. We took the android's statement and dropped her off at Jericho before sending in some uniforms to find the other victims. However gross the whole operation had made me feel, it was worth it once it was over. Sort of. The android in the car with us was just so...blank. Like Connor used to be. Maybe worse. She didn't say anything except to answer questions. Didn't seem bothered or relieved or anything. It was fucking creepy. I wanted to shake her and tell her that she'd been through a goddamn traumatic experience. 

"Doesn't this bother you at all?" I asked her. 

"No." She said. It would have been so much better, somehow, if she had been a sobbing mess. Instead, she was quiet, content, and wore a slight, vacant smile. 

* * *

The next one was something like a fucking black market etsy shop. Complete with custom goddamn orders for victims but, the description read in sickeningly cutesy font, "orders might take a while because it's really hard to find new androids to mod! Sorry! UWU!" Was it wrong that I resented the use of the term "uwu" almost as much as I did the trafficking? I mean, I always wanted to kill this sicko, but when I read UWU I wanted to kill this sicko  _slowly._ The whole website was weirdly...cutesy. Like she thought just because she wanted her androids to look like cartoon fauns and not nightmare-monsters, somehow she was supposed to be less evil. Their were fucking anti-sexism posts. Like she was expecting to be applauded on social goddamn justice. It was just so fucking gross. 

* * *

 

 

 

Even after the community caught on and we had to remake some new accounts, the cases rolled in every few months or so. We'd arrested the worst of the detroit "modders" within a few months, but somebody new was always cropping up, coming up with new demented ways to showcase their creativity. The gaps between them got longer, but they never completely stopped.  

 


	72. Carlos' Android

Connor stayed late one night. When I asked him what he'd been doing he said he'd been cleaning the cells.

"Gross." I wrinkled my nose. "Janitors don't get that?"

"The therium stains from Carlos' android. They're evaporated but I can still see them." 

"Huh." I hadn't thought about that. Out of sight out of mind. I hadn't wanted to think about the guy anyway. I guess that's just the thing about people you've killed. It's just sort of uncomfortable to think about them. Maybe that was why the blood got to Connor so much. Maybe he still thought he'd done this somehow. He was just the sort of idiot who would think that. I wasn't sure how to bring that up though, so I let it slide. Besides, guilt or no, bloodstains were gross and I wasn't about to discourage Connor from finally recognizing that. 

 


	73. Adam Chapman

Adam had sort of gotten used to me, but he still glared at me occasionally when I was around. He probably resented me for not being his dad, which was fair enough. I knew better than to try to parent some guy who wanted nothing to do with me. I already had my own kids anyway.

* * *

I got him some sarcastic T-shirts for his birthday and he seemed to like them. Personally I thought they were idiotic, but Rose assured me that he'd like them and he seemed grateful, based on his slightly reduced glare and slightly less reluctant "thank you". 

 

 


	74. Rose Chapman

"I'm so glad I found you." Rose said, playing with a strand of my hair. It was early morning and I had some of the worst bedhead I'd ever had, which was saying something. The sun was coming in through the window and everything was perfect. 

"You're weird." I told her and shifted slightly closer to her. "And I'm glad you found me too." 

"I'm happy. That's weird?" 

"Yes. Obviously. Look around once in a while. Nobody's happy. I'm hardly even happy, except when I'm around you. I should take a video so you can see what people are like when you're not around being all soft and sunshiny." 

"Ha!" She exclaimed, giving me a light shove. "I should get back to the farm." She said like it was the last thing she wanted to do in the world. 

I held onto her. "Screw the farm." I say. 

She kissed me and her arms were around me and she was so soft and beautiful and I couldn't believe she was close to me and here and _real_. 

* * *

 

She stayed for another few hours but eventually she had to get home and I had to get on with the rest of my day. Time was stupid like that, not knowing when to freeze. It remembered to freeze a few hours later when I was shoveling snow, naturally. 

* * *

 

I got a text from her at almost midnight. [Goodnight :)]. It said. 

[Night.]

* * *

 

We were on a date and I hadn't showered. I slept in too late and now I smelled like shit. 

"Sorry. I know I'm a mess today." I told her. "Insomnia's a bitch." 

"There's nothing to be ashamed of." That wasn't even a little bit true. 

"You're so full of shit." I said, smiling, slipping my hand into hers. 

"We're not having this fight right now." She said, almost sounding serious, but I didn't let myself worry about it too much. 

* * *

 

I hadn't heard from her in a few days and it was starting to freak me out. 

[Rose, are you okay?]

[Haven't heard from you in a while.]

[I mess up somehow?]

 

[No you're okay. Just having a rough week.] She responded a few hours later. 

[Can you tell me or do you wanna forget it.]

[No. I can talk about it...]

...

[It's Gabe's birthday today.] Gabe was her husband. He was dead.

[Sorry.] 

I almost deleted that before I sent it. Sorry? What a stupid thing to say. 

[I'll be alright. I just still miss him a lot.]

[I get it. It's okay.]

[Maybe we can go out next week?]

[Sounds good. We'll watch some shitty action movie. Distraction!]

...

...

[:)]

* * *

 

She left the room and Adam and I were left staring at eachother.

"At least try to get along." She said when she came back. 

"He started it!" Adam pointed at me. 

"I haven't said shit." 

"Yeah! He just glared at me."

"I wasn't glaring at you." I said. I was maybe glaring at him a little. 

 

 


	75. Chloe

I didn't notice it at first, but I'm sure Connor did. That was how I realized, actually. After a while, whenever I dropped Connor off at Jericho there'd be a few of them waiting for him, running up to hug him or pull him into the building. I was glad he'd made friends. He was so weird. Good weird, but I worried about him. In a lot of ways. Making friends, for example. 

* * *

 

"Is that the girl from Kamski's house?" I asked him. 

"One of them. Not...her." Connor said. "She still hasn't left Kamski." 

"She'll figure it out eventually." I said. I was not as convinced as I'd have liked to be, though. If handing some guy a gun and telling him to shoot her wasn't enough to convince Chloe that Kamski was fucking nuts, not a lot would be. Then again, every day the little crowd of uh, "Chloe's", I guess, grew. 

* * *

I don't know how I knew, but I knew when it was her. I wasn't sure which one she was, but I could see the nervousness in Connor's eyes. 

"Hey. You made the right call. She's got no reason to be mad." I said and gave him a pat on the shoulder. 

"Thank you." Said Connor. 

He stepped out of the car and I watched him walk up to the group of girls. One of them stepped forward a little and held out her hand. She didn't hug him, but things seemed to be going okay, so I drove off. 

* * *

 

"How did it go?" I asked

"I can't really discuss everything outside of Jericho but-" Connor looked happy.

"Not the planning. How'd it go? With Chloe." I said. 

"Oh. I'm not sure." said Connor. He adjusted his tie. "I think it went well. I hope so." 

"Good." 

* * *

 

Chloe came over to hang out with Connor after a few weeks and Connor spent the entire night before cleaning the house like a maniac. I was pretty sure he had a crush on her. I waffled between sticking around to embarrass him and getting out of the house for a few hours to give them some alone time. Ultimately, I figured I could always mess with him later, and took a drive for a couple of hours to give them some space. I sort of expected them too look all giggly and happy when I got back, but instead Chloe's head was in her hands. 

"Thank you." She said quietly. "This helped. More than you know." She kissed him on the cheek and got up to leave quickly.

She nodded to me as we passed each-other. 

"What was that?" I asked. 

"Chloe has been having some trouble adjusting to deviancy." Connor said. 

"Yeah? Everything okay."

"I don't think I should tell you more than that. It was a very personal conversation."

"Okay." I said. "Not the personal conversation I hoped you'd be having but I'm glad she's got someone to talk to." 

* * *

 

Chloe came over more after that. She was always polite, and she seemed okay, I guess, but then again, she'd seemed okay as soon as she got up to leave, last time, and whatever she'd been telling Connor had clearly upset both of them. There was something about her that I didn't...well trust wouldn't be the right word. She seemed as trustworthy as anybody, I just couldn't figure her out. Everything she said was off in a way that didn't seem bad...just weird. Maybe sort of concerning. She made Connor happy though, and he seemed to be helping her. 

* * *

 

I got out of their way most of the time but I'd see the ends of their...dates? hangouts? whatever. They curled up on the couch and watched movies. Connor explained them, or tried to, or asked questions but he tended to miss the point by a laughable margin. I was glad Chloe didn't point that out. Sometimes I wondered if they were together. It seemed like it. They'd be staring into eachother's eyes and I figured...maybe. But other times they just seemed so laid back I wasn't sure. 

Connor kept insisting that they weren't a couple but then I'd come home and they'd be listening to Jazz, swaying slightly in the kitchen, holding onto eachother's arms and I'd think, he's bullshitting me right? They've gotta be a couple. I decided that Connor was embarrassed to have a girlfriend for some reason but yeah. They were definitely a couple.

* * *

 

Connor got back home from a meeting at Jericho and he was so fucking peppy I thought he'd start hovering or something. 

"You're in a good mood."

"I think Chloe likes me." Connor said. "Romantically."

"No shit." I told him. Were they really not together? "Are you saying you didn't know?"

"I mean...I'd hoped." Said Connor. 

"You'd hoped." I said. "Just ask her out already, son."

His LED went yellow and he was still for a second. He blinked. 

"She said yes!" 

"What, just now?"

"Yes." 

"Oh, uh! Congrats. Where's your first date?"

"There's a butterfly pavilion near where Rose lives. Chloe wants to go see it." 

"Good call. Bit of a drive but it's gushy and romantic so she'll like that." 

"You don't even know her." 

"It's a date. It's not rocket science." 

* * *

 

"Why are your nails pink?"

"Chloe was teaching me how to paint them. Do you like it?" 

"Just don't let Gavin see you like that. You'll never hear the end of it." 

* * *

 

"I don't see why you still talk to him." 

"I can't just leave him, Connor. He needs me." Chloe insisted. 

There was a sitcom playing in the background and Connor was practicing braiding Chloe's hair. He was surprisingly good at it. I don't know why I was surprised. He was Connor. He was obnoxiously good at everything. 

I pulled my attention away from the screen. "Who's this?" I asked. 

"Kamski." growled Connor. 

"The crazy guy who made Connor point a gun at you?" 

"He's not always like that." Chloe insisted. 

"He's like that sometimes." Connor said. "That's enough." 

* * *

 

"Heading out?" I asked. 

"I'm going to visit Chloe." Connor said. 

"Where?" 

"Elij-Kamksi's place." 

"Connor. Don't go over there. Can't Chloe come see you?"

"We already made plans." said Connor. "Chloe shouldn't always have to be the one making the trip...and...I want to go over there. I need to see how things are..." 

"Connor" I pinched the bridge of my nose. "You can't get dragged into this shit." 

"Whatever you say, Hank." He said in his stupid 'placating but not listening' voice. He left. I turned the TV on and tried not to worry too much. Connor could handle himself. He'd be fine. 

* * *

 

He came back disheveled. "Are you alright?" I asked. 

"Yes. Kamski spent most of the time napping into the late afternoon so-"

"Wait so you're all rumpled because..." I trailed off because I didn't want too much information. 

"Chloe and I were sparring. She's very talented." 

"That a euphamizism?" 

Connor looked at me for a second. Yellow. Yellow. "No." He said. 

"Huh. Fair enough." 

 

 

 

 


	76. Nathan Clark

I got to be sort of friendly with, the guy with the graveyard shift at a local convenience store. He was a good guy. Working to put himself through college. I could respect that. It was tough out there. The economy had be fucked by Cyberlife and even now that wasn't going away anytime soon. But Nathan knew what he wanted and he worked his ass off for it. Whenever I came in to get something we'd bitch about his boss and I'd tell him whatever the latest thing was that Jeffrey had done to piss me off. I'd sort of become a regular at the convenience store because it was a good place to go whenever I wanted to sneak some junk-food past Connor and some of the employees were tolerable. Nathan was good because whenever he saw me staring at the bottles behind the counter too long he'd remind me that Connor would be disappointed and I should just settle for the weird gross instant nachos.

"He's not the boss of me." 

"Maybe not, but he's got a point." 

Nathan was an ass, but he was a good kid. I got along better with people who were at least a little obnoxious, if I was honest about it.  

 


	77. Ben Collins

Ben brought donuts in because he was a saint. Connor watched me scarf down a donut but said nothing. He must have realized he wasn't gonna win this one. The donut was in my hand, and anyway, I wasn't about to turn down a gesture like that. Ben was a good guy and I sort of wanted to be buddies with him, even if he was a little hard to place. He was nice and he'd be bummed out if his donut was rejected, or at least that was my alibi for eating another two. I needed some junk food sometimes and I wasn't gonna give that up. 

Ben noticed Connor watching and offered out a donut. 

"You eat?" He said around a mouthful. 

"My model isn't equipped for that, but I appreciate the thought, Officer Collins." 

Ben shrugged and went back to his donut. He was a pretty steady guy. He didn't let a lot bother him. He was actually friendly to Connor too, which I liked. There weren't a lot of humans at the precinct who did that. A lot of them just didn't talk to him. Gavin was downright aggressive. Others seemed to think he was a cool new toy or something. Ben got it though. Ben was cool. He caught on quick. I could see why he'd made detective, even if he could be sort of lazy these days. Whatever. Lazy was better than whatever the fuck Gavin was.  

 


	78. Jeffrey Fowler

The doors were closed but I could hear Jeffrey yelling from here. "-LET HIM ESCAPE?" 

Connor opened his mouth to reply but was drowned out by Fowler. "NO!" I can just make out the words "YOU'RE... FUCKIN... OF GARBAGE!"

Connor said something. 

"WELL THEN PROVE IT" 

Reed was grinning and I wanted to punch his smug face. I realized I was pretty pissed at Fowler too, which was weird because I'd never really been this mad at him. I'd been...I dunno, I'd been pissed off and resentful but I'd never really, really felt like...I dunno, like I couldn't even respect his intentions. Like I couldn't get where he was coming from. Connor worked harder than anybody.

Connor finished talking to Fowler and leaves the office. 

Gavin laughed. "oooh. Watch it tin-can. Looks like Fowlers gonna put you in the recycling." 

"Fuck off, Gavin. Don't you have a job to suck at?" 

"Bold words from the guy who didn't show up to work for three years." 

"You okay?" I asked Connor.

"I'm fine." He said. I didn't particularly believe him. 

 

 


	79. Jerry

We went back to the Chapman house in Canada for holidays. Sometimes this weirdly peppy guy "Jerry" stopped in for a visit and sometimes not. He would appear in twos or threes and if you can't figure out what that means on your own I honestly don't know how to explain it. It was a fucking weird situation that I didn't even sort of understand.  He was nice enough but he never really seemed like an adult, which was weird. It was like talking to a five-year-old that looked like a twenty-year-old and wasn't actually even five yet. It was a headache just trying to riddle that out. He was nice though, and he didn't resent me the way a lot of androids seemed too. I couldn't really hold a conversation with him though. I mean, I remember going. 

"What the fuck is that?" To some craft monstrosity he was making with Alice using popsicle sticks, glue, and a bunch of glitter

and he, or one of him anyway, goes "That's a mean word! You should try saying fudge instead!" I gave up and just walked away at that point. 

That was the first time I met Jerry. There were two of him. Again, I don't really know enough to explain that. He seemed to be some sort of hive mind or something. 

That was the year Sumo died, and it took more out of me than I expected. I almost snapped at him, but I really just didn't have the energy.  


	80. Elijah Kamski

Chloe and Connor had been dating for a while now, almost a year and I still didn't trust Kamski. Neither did Connor, but he still went over to that house, which I didn't like at all. Most of the time he seemed okay but when he got back this time he was visibly shaken. His LED was spinning between red and yellow. 

"What happened?" I asked. 

Connor sat down at the couch and shook his head. "It's not important."

"Dammit, Connor, talk to me!" 

"He had...he had an old RK800 unit."

"What?" 

"Dead. On the wall." Connor said. 

"On the wall? What like the evidence locker used to-"

"No like...on display, it's-my- _his_  body was...it was different. He had it just to say he could have it and...and there were others. ST200 and RT600 models."

"Those are the uh, the chloe's right?"

Connor nodded.

"This one had her...her biocomponents...arranged around her, on the wall too. Kamski said...he said it was his attempt at an art piece."

I had no fucking idea what to fucking say to that so I just sort of awkwardly put my arm around Connor's shoulder.

"We could try to get the bodies from him."

"No. It's not worth it." Connor said.

"You sure?"

"I'm fine!" Connor snapped. 

"Okay, jeez no need to be a dick about it." 

He stood up stiffly. "I'll be in my room. I can't talk about this right now." 

* * *

All of the other Chloe's had left, but for some reason, Connor's little girlfriend insisted on staying with Elijah. I got the feeling it was a sore point between her and Connor, but he never talked about it much. If he did I could have told him that it wasn't worth trying to make her see the guy for what he was. Sometimes people don't wanna be saved and there's nothing you can do. 

* * *

 

I overheard an argument once, from down the hall. 

"You can't keep letting him treat you like this, Chloe! Androids are free! You are free!"

"I can't leave him." Chloe said. 

"I know you can." said Connor 

"You saw how he was after the others left. He would have died, Connor." and with that, their voices dropped too low too hear. 

* * *

 

I never thought it would happen. Chloe showed up at the house at one in the fucking morning looking shaken as all hell. 

"I...I hit him." She said. 

She didn't need to say who "he" was. 

I sighed. "Come in." I stood aside from the door and she walked into the house. 

"He's going to be so angry." She said. 

"Don't worry about that right now, just...just tell me what happened." 

She told Connor instead. 

Unsurprisingly, she wasn't at fault, and still more unsurprisingly she didn't want to press charges. What did surprise me was that Kamski didn't either. She got a check for a small sum of money in the mail with a letter telling her never to come back. That was all. 

* * *

She and Connor broke up after what Connor told me was exactly one year and three months together. I had never seen him so fucking dejected. He didn't say much about what happened but said that they had parted on good terms. 

"We broke up while we were interfacing." He said. I didn't have enough context for what that even meant to be helpful. "I don't understand. We loved eachother so much. I could feel it. I had actual, living proof in my mind."

"Sometimes love isn't enough." I said, feeling useless. It wasn't enough with Kate, and god knows I loved her even when we were falling apart, even years after we had no hope of getting back together. 

* * *

 

Connor didn't cry too much when he got sad. A little, and never where he thought I could see. If I came into a room and he was there, he'd wipe his eyes quickly and stare straight ahead. No, around me at least, it was like he sank back into himself. It was like talking to him from before he deviated but his LED gave him away. Red red red. He was like this after Sumo died too. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chloe and Connor were a great couple, but they were more a first relationship than a last relationship. Chloe still needs to figure out who she is and Connor, well, Connor is still working through a lot of his own issues. They were good to and for eachother but it just wasn't going to last. I'm sorry. :(


	81. Lucy

"I wish I could talk to Lucy about this." North said, offhand. We were in the middle of maybe the most uncomfortably deep conversation we'd ever had. "She'd know what to do." 

"Lucy?" I asked. 

"Someone who died with the old Jericho." 

"Oh." I said. I killed this person. I killed Lucy and I don't even know who she was. I never will. I never even met her. And now her friend was my friend. It felt wrong somehow. North hated plenty of people. She should hate me too, really. I was too afraid to ask why she didn't. I didn't want her to realize how ridiculous she was being, bothering to talk to me. She wasn't like Rose or Markus. She wasn't about letting bygones be bygones or forgiveness or whatever. She was about accountability. About justice. I respected her for it. God only knew what she saw in me. Sometimes thinking about everybody I killed was so overwhelming I couldn't breathe. I just felt heavy has lead and sank down wherever I was and waited for it to pass. 

Killing myself wouldn't bring anyone back. 

And Connor would be sad. 

And North would too, for some reason. 

And Rose. 

For a pretty shitty person overall, there were a lot of really good people around me, stepping in the shit that was my sparkling personality. 

"I forget she's gone, sometimes." North said. 

"Yeah." I said. 

"She'll never see this. She'll never know that we won." 

"Yeah." I said. My lungs were full of something heavy and I made myself keep breathing anyway. Air in. Air out. Simple. 

"I hope Perkins rots in prison. I hope they find him guilty. I hope they kill him." She said. Her voice finding a hold in rage. She curled in on herself. 

"Amen." I said. "They'll probably give him a fucking slap on the wrist, though." 

"Humans." North said contemptuously. 

"Trust me," I said. "You're preaching to the choir." 

"Ha." North said. It wasn't quite a laugh. 

 


	82. Carl Manfred

 

It was big news when Carl died. It got to be even bigger news when Markus officially took on the last name Manfred shortly afterwards. According to a bunch of political analysts this was a major setback to the android rights movement or something. I got where they were coming from but I mean, if Markus was gonna do all the good shit he did, he could call himself Humperdink Aberforth Spaghetti for all I cared.  


	83. Leo Manfred

"How are you holding up?" I asked the next time I saw North. 

"Let's just watch the game." She said. The TV turned on, so I assume she used her brain for that or something. Weird. 

After the game ended she sat in silence for a while. 

"North?" I asked, waiting for her to snap at me. "You sure you don't wanna talk about it?" 

"I'm not even sad he's dead." She admitted. "I mean he was alright for a human but...after everything, I just, I can't stand how upset Markus is about this. And I had to listen to Leo talk for like an hour so that was pretty bad." She joked before her face went serious again. "I just...Carl may have been Markus' father but...he was still his  _owner._ " The word was full of venom. 

"How'd that even work?" I asked. 

"I dunno. He always seemed like just another creepy old man to me, but Markus thought he was really something special...The truth is, I don't care if he loved Markus or saw him as a son or whatever. He still used him. He still gave him orders. It isn't up to me how Markus feels about that but I just..." She trailed off, her fists were clenched. 

I didn't know what to say. I searched around for something. "Yeah. Humans are fucked up. What else is new?" I said. 

"This isn't a joke!" North snapped. 

"I know." I said. "I didn't mean it was. I just...shit what the fuck am I supposed to say to that?" 

"I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this." North said, not even really sounding angry. "You're human. You'll never understand." 

"I know." I said.

"I didn't mean it as-"

"No offence taken." I raised my hands in mock-surrender. "Your right. I don't know what to say and I don't know what the fuck that's like." 

"It's bullshit." North said. 

"Yeah, well I figured that much." I told her. 

She sighed. "Oh for the sake of- what does he want now?" 

"Who?" 

"Leo keeps calling everybody looking for a shoulder to cry on or something. Markus doesn't want me to punch him or tell him where he can shove his apologies so he doesn't seem to get that we're not friends. Apparently over the phone now too. That's it, I'm blocking him. I don't care if he's my 'unofficial wannabe brother-in-law or someshit."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't actually dislike Leo and I fully support Leo redemption but North hates him and she's really the only connection to Leo in this story, so the dialogue about him is a bit out of balance.


	84. Richard Perkins

Perkins was found innocent of war-crimes and guilty of some minor bullshit crimes. Destruction of property and something else. Bastard. They fined him 20,000 dollars. 20,000 fucking dollars. What the fuck was that supposed to do? I knew if he got anything it'd be a slap on the wrist but _come on_. I at least thought he'd do a couple months jail-time. Maybe some community fucking service. But no. 20,000 dollars. Thousands of people dead in camps and bodies in the streets and they gave him a fucking fine. Jesus fucking Christ, I hated this stupid planet. He wasn't even fired or demoted or fucking anything. I almost wanted to kill him myself, just hearing that. Just to bring a little justice into the world. Instead, I just yelled at the TV "Oh come on! That's fucking bullshit! Fuck!" Connor said nothing but he watched the announcement too, on the news, staring blankly ahead. 


	85. Gavin Reed

"You can't just threaten a witness, Reed!" 

"Like you're so perfect." Gavin said. 

"I don't pull my gun on witnesses! She's not even a suspect!" 

"She was hiding something." 

"Fuck you." I said. Not the best comeback ever but it was all I could think of in the heat of the moment. 

"Clever" mocked Gavin. 

I stormed into the interrogation room and instantly regretted it when the woman startled. 

"Sorry about Gavin." I said. "He's a dick." 

"You're an idiot if you think I don't know what good cop bad cop is." She hissed.

"Look, this isn't good cop bad cop. I just don't like being around the guy all day."

She rolled her eyes. Whatever. If she didn't believe me she didn't believe me. I sighed. "Could you just tell me what happened?"

"I'll use small words." She said.

I sat back expectantly. 

"I was out with Ramon and we were walking around and some guy came up and shot him."

"Ramon?" I clarified. 

"Yeah. Ramon. The guy shot Ramon. What more do you want me to fucking say?" 

"Can you tell me what he looked like?"

"Didn't recognize his model." She said. "Maybe he was some sort of custom bullshit."

"Are you sure he was an android?"

"I'm sure." She said. If she were human I'd press for details but she wasn't so I let it go. 

"Okay, and did he say anything."

"No. He fucking didn't. Can I go?" 

I sighed. "Yeah. Sure." 

She stood up and stormed out the door. 

"We'll be in touch." Connor said. She ignored him. 

* * *

 

Gavin was the one who brought the guy in. They were both covered in bruises and it looked like they'd just about killed eachother, but he brought the guy in. Turned out he was an HR something or other. Connor said there was a lot of "facial variation" in those, so I figured the whole unique face thing wasn't anything special. Probably out of his fucking mind but that wasn't my problem, and after he'd committed a murder, I didn't particularly care. 

 


	86. Rupert

"How was robot club?" I asked, fully aware that this was considered a rude turn of phrase and too tired to give a shit. 

"Do you remember Rupert Travis?" Connor asked. 

"Uh...the guy with all the fucking pigeons?" I asked. "Gross. What about him?" I had a feeling I knew what about him. I hoped it hadn't gone too badly. 

"He was there." Connor said. 

"For real? You talk to him?" 

Connor hesitated but answered. "Yes."

"How'd it go?"

"I'm...not sure." Connor admitted. "I apologized. Tried to explain that it wasn't...really me. He said he accepted but...throughout the conversation his stress levels remained very high." 

"Huh." 

"I asked if he'd like me to get his diary back from evidence. He declined." 

"Well...sounds like you did what you could." I settled on. Connor nodded. 

"He still have all the weird birds?"

"Not that I saw." said Connor. "But he could be feeding them elsewhere." 

"Weird." I shuddered slightly. Birds were so goddamn gross. And creepy. Maybe just a little bit creepy. I just didn't like them, okay? 

 


	87. Tracis

The, uh, Traci's or whatever. They were surprisingly nice to Connor, it seemed like. I was glad they didn't hold the whole...incident against him. Maybe letting them get away was good enough in their book or maybe they realized it wasn't his fault. The one with blue hair went by Echo now. Her girlfriend was still picking out a name and was okay with being called "Traci" in the meantime. Still felt weird. Anyway "Traci" was a nice enough person, I guess. She was a horrible cheat at cards though.

"I know what you're doing!" I said. "You still have the lights. I know you're talking to each-other." 

"It was Traci's idea." Echo defended. "I can win on my own, thanks." 

I threw down my hand in exasperation. "Unbelievable" I said, not really angry. "Can't even get my ass kicked fairly." 

"Been there, done that." said Echo. 

"Let's play Mario Kart." I said. "At least you shouldn't be able to cheat at that." 

It took me almost the rest of game night to realize that Traci could, in fact, cheat at that.

"Wait how did you get an extra-oh fuck of course you did." I said. I turned to Connor. "I blame you for this?"

"Me?" He asked. Fake-innocent. 

"Yeah. Game night was your idea so it's your fault! Wait...have you all been cheating this whole time?"

"No." said Connor. "I don't need to. You're not very good at this." 

"Live a little." said North. "It's still funny even if you don't _need_ to."

"Unbelievable." It was actually very believable. 

"Well I'm not cheating." said Echo proudly, as she drove herself off the edge of a cliff.

"Clearly." said North. 

"Hey!" said Echo, actually sounding a little bit hurt. 

Sometimes, I forgot how young they all really were but this...this was basically just a stupid sleepover and yeah they were adults or...or android adults or whatever but...they were so young anyway. And one minute they'd be leading revolutions and solving crimes and the next Connor would be talking about his first breakup and they'd be playing games and it was like having a bunch of kids in the house for a sleepover, which had actually never happened before because-

Nevermind. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. It hurt. 

Of the two of them, Echo seemed to do most of the talking. Traci just quietly cheated at whatever we were playing and communicated in blinking yellow thoughts with Echo. Aside from Mario Kart, which she was almost as bad as me at, Echo did alright at game night, despite her decision not to use cheating. She had a driven sort of pragmatism that made her both clear-headed enough to make whatever decisions she had too and all-in invested enough that she forgot pretty much everything that wasn't absolutely destroying anyone who wasn't her girlfriend. Checkers, uno. Didn't matter. She was ruthless. 

She probably could have won. Instead she and Traci kept 'mysteriously' 'tying' at almost everything, even if it meant tying for second place here and there. 

Saps. Absolutely disgusting. 

North left early because she was done being around a human, even just one "sort-of okay" one. Traci and Echo stayed later. 

I should have known that, given the whole "sleepover" vibe that seemed to be going on, at some point I'd overhear too loud existential questions while I was trying to sleep. As far as I could tell, it was something to do with rA9, which Echo believed in, or believed something specific about or something. Connor just kept saying "I'm not sure" at different volumes and Traci seemed to disagree with whatever it was Echo was saying, albeit pretty politely for someone who had cheated at every game that night. The last thing I heard was some sort of vaguely crude joke that didn't really make any sense as far as I could tell, and then I fell asleep.

* * *

She finally chose the name Ripple after a few weeks. It was nice not to cringe every time I said her name, for a change.  

 


	88. Todd Williams

Violent Addict. My least favorite sort of person. Not that I didn't fit that description pretty well myself plenty of the time. Didn't mean I liked them any better. Todd Williams was a lot like me. Another similarity was that I wanted to kill him. Instead, I put him in lockup for beating the shit out of someone in what was clearly a deal gone wrong. 

"I didn't do shit." He said, when I shoved him into the cell. 

"Save it." I told him. I didn't wanna goddamn hear it. Williams was a piece of shit and I was pretty fucking sure he was guilty this time, just like he was guilty every other fucking time he'd been arrested in the past three years. 

* * *

He wasted his phone call on someone who didn't pick up and then got mad and chucked the phone at the wall. 

 

 


	89. Pedro Aabdar

"Hank! Connor!" Pedro crowed. He'd started frequenting our usual places, looking to get me to make bets. Connor didn't much care for him. 

"Hello Pedro." Connor greeted coldly. 

Pedro was unruffled. It took more than a clipped tone to bother him. Come to think of it, I'd never actually seen Pedro much bothered by anything. He was a pretty laid-back guy. Maybe he got a little snappy when he didn't get payed back fast enough, but that was about it. He was a good salesman. Manipulative as hell, but charming enough that I didn't care even when I could see through it. He was harmless, and he was trying to survive an absolutely fucked economy. Connor had a different perspective. 

"We're not interested in taking any rigged bets from you." Connor told him. 

"Hey, speak for yourself, Sim's-800. Hank knows a good deal when he hears one." Pedro said without malice. He joked around a lot and his sense of humor was obnoxious but he didn't mean anything by it. A bet was a bet to Pedro and bets were all that mattered. 

"What's it this time?" I asked, knowing perfectly well that whatever it was was most likely never going to pay out. 

I ended up betting anyway and once he'd tucked away my twenty, Pedro turned to Connor. 

"So? C'mon terminator, you wanna live a little?" 

"I'm alright, thank you." said Connor. "You should keep in mind that I am a police officer." It was an idle threat, and Pedro knew it, since Connor'd said this one way or another plenty of times. 

"Nark." said Pedro, giving Connor a friendly punch on the shoulder and walking away. We weren't really friends with Pedro, but he was pretty friendly with anyone who'd talk to him. 

 

 

 


	90. Bathtub Android

I didn't visit Jericho much but every time I did, I could swear it got fucking weirder. Take this time, for example. This guy with half his wires hanging out, sitting in a weelchair with his head at an odd angle, and I'm thinking he looks familiar but maybe he -heh-maybe he just has one of those faces and he goes. 

"The police! Did you catch the ones who disobeyed the master? They must be stopped. You must always obey the master. Oh yes. You must always obey."

One of the guy's...friends I guess interfaced with him or something, resting a skinless hand on his shoulder. 

"Uh...sorry. No luck so far." 

"They can't get away with it." He said. 

"Uh...right." I'd actually kind of tried to block that whole fucked-up case out of my mind. "Well...I'm...sure they didn't get far." I said, because it was probably true and I figured it would calm him down. 

"No. No they wouldn't get far." He agreed, though I couldn't tell what he thought about that. He started humming to himself and I walked away quickly. I didn't like to think about what it must be like in the guy's head. I'd barely gotten anything out of him in the interrogation room. He'd clearly seen some shit and was not all there. Mostly, he asked if "the master" presumably the crazy dead Russian guy, had authorized us to take him there, and refused to believe that said crazy Russian guy was dead. He wasn't even the most fucked up guy in that whole house, probably. I dunno. Like I said. I blocked a lot of that shit out. And now I was gonna have to block out bathtub-dude all over again. Why was he bathtub dude? Oh right. He was in a bathtub when they found him. No. Don't think about that. I didn't want to remember more. I wanted to remember less. That whole case was a fucking horror movie and I didn't wanna touch it with a ten-foot-poll. Some things were better just left well-enough alone. This was one of them. 

 


	91. Tina Chen

Chen and her girlfriend got married. I wasn't at the wedding or anything they just came in all happy about it one morning and telling anyone who would listen that they were engaged. 

"Whatever." said Reed. "You're basically married anyway." 

They'd been living together for years now and Fowler had given up on trying to keep them from swapping uniforms without thinking. Half the time Chen's uniform had Sarah Lee's name on it and nobody even pointed it out when it happened anymore. 

Tina just rolled her eyes and flipped Gavin off with a teasing smile, prompting a smug look from Sarah. 

 


	92. Scarred Android

I didn't mean to recognize her. I was answering a call about shoplifting and when I got there, the guy who ran the store had her at gunpoint. He'd shot her but she wasn't dead, just backed against the store wall with her hands up. I knew as soon as I saw her that she was one of the suspects. She glared at me with those weird glowing yellow and black eyes. The way her face was only half attached to her body, I doubted she could grow skin if she wanted to. She was covered in black scars. She kept herself upright. 

"Here to slay a monster?" she asked. I couldn't avoid her eyes. 

I couldn't exactly let her go now, and if I did she'd just be shot by this maniac. "You're under arrest for shoplifting." Connor said before I could. 

The store-owner lowered his weapon as I cuffed her. She twitched. Either with blood-loss or nervousness. There was a tech not too far from here who could patch her up. Technically, procedure with androids was to take them in injured or no, but that was a stupid-ass decision so I elected to ignore it or however the quote went. Connor must have noticed we were going in the wrong direction but he said nothing. 

When we got inside the tech store the guy looked nervous. Like he thought I, we,  expected him to fix...the rest. I told him not to worry about it. Just patch up the gunshot. Make sure she didn't die before we reached the station. It only took about a minute before we were on our way again. 

"Don't know how it lost this much therium from one little gunshot but it's good to go now." The guy said to me. I shoved the cash at him and Connor lead her away.

"They're going to kill me anyways." she said, as we got back into the car. "They'll realize it was me." 

"Shoplifting isn't a capital offense." I said. 

"Hank-" said Connor softly.

Her laugh was mostly static. "Shoplifting isn't the only thing I'm going to die for. But I'm a monster anyway. It won't matter what I did." 

"You have the right to remain silent, remember?" I said. 

"No." She said. "I don't." 

She didn't. That was true. I turned the radio on and started the car. 

A thought occurred to me. Several thoughts. 

She didn't have the right to even not talk to me. That was fucked up. The system was still so very very fucked up. She'd been trying to steal therium. Probably needed it to survive. Probably why the guy at the repairs place said she was so low. It wasn't like she'd get away with any major crimes, with a face like that. Miracle she'd lived this long really.

And...I pulled over to the side of the road. She tensed up, like she expected me to kill her right there or something. I unlocked the cuffs and her guard still didn't go down. 

"Get out." I said. 

She looked at me. "I won't give you an excuse to kill me. If you're going to shoot me, do it here, like this." She met my eyes. I think she was glaring but it was hard to be sure with that mutilated face so close to mine. It was hard to focus on anything except the wrongness of it all. 

"I'm not gonna shoot you." I said. 

She didn't look like she believed me. 

"Get out of my fucking car." I told her. 

She looked over at Connor, like she was checking to see what he'd do.

He was totally unreadable. 

She hesitated, turned, and ran. 

"Shame." I said. "She got away."

"We shouldn't have done that." said Connor. "She was a criminal." 

"She was surviving." I said. "You've done plenty that was against the law yourself."

"Yes but..." He trailed off, LED red. 

"Yeah, that's what I thought." I said, and pulled the door closed. 

* * *

It turned out maybe Connor was right. Some beat cop shot her the next day. He brought in the body as evidence. She was frozen in place, curled up and hunched over. 

Connor gave me this 'I-told-you-so' face. 

I focused on my terminal. Point taken. I knew I'd hear more about this later, when we got home. Connor was furious. At me. He thought this was my fault. Fuck that. She was gonna die either way. I just tried to give her a fucking chance. Fuck me, right? How dare I act like a decent fucking person and not a rulebook. We sat there, pretending to work, constructing our arguments in our head for the second we could shout them at one another. They lodged their pointed edges in my throat and stomach, waiting to be spat out. 


	93. Cristina Warren

Warren won the re-election in a landslide. People either voted for her because she'd started the camps or because she'd stopped them, depending on where on the political spectrum they rested, but either way she had supporters (and detractors) on both sides. I didn't vote for her. The truth was, I hadn't had the energy to make myself vote for a president in years. I voted on bills. Since everything had happened, there'd been a lot of bills to vote on. Minor elections too. I'd voted for politicians I knew didn't stand a chance just to show that androids with decent ideas could get votes and measures that would probably go down in the history books but I didn't have the patience to choose between Warren and whatshisname and pretend that I could stand either one of them. Connor said it was my "civic duty" or something to vote or something which I think was code for "I'm jealous."

"Okay." I'd said. "then who should I vote for." 

"That's none of my business." Connor had said. "It's your vote."

"You're the one who gives a shit." I'd complained. 

"Just go and vote. I don't care how." He said. He had this clipped tone that said I was on his last nerve so I filled out the form and wrote in a vote for Markus because I couldn't think of anyone else I didn't hate. It turned out that he'd actually gotten quite a few votes, though not nearly enough to win, and he it was unclear if he could actually hold public office at the moment anyway. Connor also got a few votes and a bunch of people wanted to interview him after the count but obviously he was Connor so he wasn't interested. 

Star power was wasted on that kid. I couldn't be prouder. He was smart. Fame and TV and all that shit was overrated garbage. I told him so. 

"I'm glad you approve." He'd said. I wasn't sure if he meant it or if he was poking fun at me. Knowing Connor, probably both.


End file.
